Nigeria is today trailing some of its peers when certain economic indices are compared, but a recent forum organised by Nigeria-Britain Association says the country can only make progress with innovative ideas that are not necessarily technology driven.
The forum advises Nigerians both in the public and private sectors to think of innovations on broader sense of adding value to life in order to solve the challenges slowing the country down.
The forum themed ‘Innovation: Path to sustainable growth’ underscores government roles such as policies, incentives and tax breaks that enable innovations in Nigeria, but advises the private sector to always create innovations to surmount infrastructure and policy constraints.
KPMG official, Segun Zacchaeus, who led the discussion at the one-day forum, describes Nigeria’s economic challenges as ‘wicked problems’ and says it is only through innovations the problems can be tackled.
Zacchaeus lists some of these perennial problems as diminishing growth, high level of poverty, unemployment, poor infrastructure, poor education and health systems and high number of out of school children in Nigeria, among others.
“Nigeria is currently in a quagmire with every indicator showing that Nigeria is in a serious situation. In strategy, this is called a wicked problem. It is a problem one tries to solve but it persists and as we go through the years, the problem is still there,” Zacchaeus says.
According to Zacchaeus, Nigeria’s economic challenges are further complicated with the changing world. “While Nigeria is battling with basic problems of unemployment, poverty, children out of school, insecurity, poor health care, poor education, the world has gone to the next level, which is the 4th industrial revolution.”
He therefore warns that if Nigeria does not adopt innovation, defined as improvement on ways of doing things to add value and to tackle the challenges, its situation may worsen over the next decade.
“Innovation is the key to unlocking productivity. In turn productivity drives economic growth. If Nigeria wants to reach 6-7% economic growth, it must unlock the productivity issue. For us to achieve productivity, innovation must be our mainstay as a nation”, he said.
Regretting that Nigeria is ranked 114 out of 129 innovative countries, he says countries that prosper are very high in innovation ranking. “The prosperity of any nation is depended on how innovative the nation is”.
Also speaking at the forum, Philip Folusho of Philips Consulting, who defines innovation as creating the next level of customer convenience, notes the high interest among youth on innovation, believing that with this kind of mind-set, in the next 10-15 years, Nigeria should have a country with latent entrepreneurship.
To further drive innovation, Philips advocates for a value chain of collaborators, where different people with different expertise and experience collaborate to innovate.
In his speech, the president of the association, Shola Tinubu, says the association has begun to focus more on youth to ensure that they are better equipped to take charge of the future.
The British Deputy High Commissioner represented by Peter Thomas also lists a number of funding activities UK government is undertaking in Africa to support Fintech in order to grow investment in the continent.
