Driving Economic growth with innovation
USING INNOVATION TO DRIVE ECONOMIC GROWTH IN NIGERIA
By Ayo Emakhiomhe
For any economy to be transformed by innovation, such an economy must be driven by innovation.
Innovation is everywhere but must be tapped into by creating an environment that encourages innovation, and this is a responsibility of both the public and private sectors.
An innovative environment is an environment that drives creativity, solutions, change, dynamism and development. Innovation is about seeking various ways to make a product, service or system faster, cheaper or better to aid production, productivity, revenue and or costs.
Innovation can be as simple as changing the device applied in a process or reinventing/redesigning the whole system. It could be simply replacing a bucket with a basket or changing an entire assembly line.
For a country like Nigeria to achieve innovative growth of the economy, they must engage in the following amongst many other options.
1.????? Planning. Presently, we have the medium-term economic framework (MTEF), which is a 3–5-year plan of the economic outlook for the country. We need to extend this beyond this short term. We need to plan at least 20 years into the future of the economy. It is this long-term plan that will now be broken down into short-term and medium-term plans that are now being implemented. Any other measure is a start and push mechanism that always fails.
2.????? Vision alignment. The leader defines the path for the followers who in turn now walk along the defined path. Its time we have a clearly defined policy direction in the country for which all the MDAs and government institutions are expected to align with and not the current system where everyone runs in line with their own definition of what the policy direction should be.
3.????? Citizen engagement. Our leaders need to talk to us. Engage the citizens and not lead in an opaque environment especially when you say one thing today and change it tomorrow. Lead with transparency, accountability and merit. If I know that my innovation has a chance to shine without “knowing†someone, I will focus more on it, but if that is not the case, then, I will simply worry about my survival only and leave the rest to the leaders. As a government, sell me your vision daily and engage me as a citizen on the various activities you are carrying out to reach this vision and what I can do to be part of it and if possible, request my input in taking the country there. That’s engagement, if this is not done, then the leaders are just leading themselves while the followers are also redefining their own paths which leads to an implosion of the system and not economic growth.
Key elements we expect the Nigeria of today to address for the long and short term to enable an innovative economy for economic growth are
1.????? Technology. The future is driven by technological enhancements that are innovative in themselves and this should be embraced and encouraged. Current key areas of tech enablement will be in the areas of telecommunications and power.
2.????? Education. An educated populace is an enlightened group, an enlightened group is an innovative group, and such a group will always look for innovative ways of achieving defined goals. Education should be addressed as part of the long-term and short-term goals of the country, especially in the areas of innovation. We need to redefine our definition and standards of education from the lowest to the highest levels today and into the future. A lot of our teaching standards are outdated, many of the systems and structures guiding our education system are more hindering than progressive and need to be accessed, public school finances need to be more autonomous. Government needs to not stop funding schools but do it more efficiently by pushing the TETFund for example more in front, do more scholarships, bursary and R&D funding while the schools run their revenue systems than this mode of being directly funded by the government. Such a system will encourage the schools to be more innovative thereby creating and catalyzing innovation in that system.
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3.????? Industry. Industry and trade drives commerce and GDP growth and no sector needs innovation more than this. But the economy is presently not business friendly with multiple taxes, massive infrastructure deficits, insecurity and poorly skilled manpower. These must be addressed.
4.????? Healthcare. A healthy nation is a productive nation. It is a population that is well that can be innovative. A lot of our health systems are outdated and non-existent, more of a threat to life than a support. The government needs to come up with very long-term plans for this sector and allow the private sector to drive it while they provide some form of guarantees which will drive massive investments (especially DFIs) and innovation in this sector. A recent study of HMO penetration in Nigeria gave a figure of about 1% for a population of about 230 million citizens.
5.????? MSME. These are the major drivers of the economy already with over 80% of companies in the country falling within that bracket. Again, long term initiatives need to be set up to support the sector development from startups to scaling. A major bane to the MSME sector is finance, not just credit but insurance. If this is addressed, innovation will thrive.
6.????? Our culture. Many elements of our culture need to be addressed as they are anti-development and will not encourage innovation. Examples include below
a.????? Timeliness. We need to address the “Nigerian time†syndrome
b.????? Quality. Our culture is that it is only the imported items that are of quality
c.????? Secrets. Our culture encourages you to succeed on your own (keep everything a secret and not share information) and not with people by collaboration. True success is not achieved by individual but by group efforts especially for great feats like nation/business building. ?This makes true the adage that the wealthiest place is the grave because of all the hidden treasures people have died with.
d.????? Corruption. Many elements in our culture feeds corruption and not otherwise. Dealing with this is very essential because culture will always supersede strategy when put side by side.
I was on Hi-Impact Tv recently and discussed these and other issues concerning using innovation to drive economic growth in Nigeria. Please view the YouTube version of the interview. Happy viewing.
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As usual, comments are welcome.