Vision 2020: Where is the Technological Capability?

By Enwere Dike

A recurrent theme in policy speeches originating in Aso Rock these days revolves on Vision 2020. The latter embodies Nigeria’s blueprint for an industrial revolution, its aspiration to undergo catch-up. The Vision 2020 document predicts that by the year 2020 – some twelve years from now – Africa’s most populous nation and the world’s 6^th largest crude oil exporter will have undergone the type of catch-up industrialization that will catapult it into the ranks of the 20 largest global economies. The global largest economies currently are constituted largely by the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development {OECD} plus China, India, Russia Brazil etc.

Central Bank Governor Chukwuma Soludo, arguably the current regime’s most articulate economic spokesman has dwelt most on the Vision 2020 project using his many public lectures to project this gospel. Thus in a lecture  delivered in 2006 at the University of  Benin Founders’ Day, Chukwuma Soludo dwelt extensively on how  Nigeria’ growth  potentials  could be harnessed to  kick start  an economic growth cycle leading to an industrial revolution in the style of China. Chukwuma  Soludo, a master of economic metaphor, conjured a picture of Nigeria rising to become the ‘China of Africa’ by the year 2020. In an address to the Nigerian Economic Summit Group [NESG] in October 2008 President Umaru Yar’Adua returned to the Vision 2020 theme, admitting, however, that its realization faces serious constraints posed by a lack of ‘purposeful leadership’, a definite roadmap and growth-inducing environment.

Among the pertinent questions one should pose and answer in any objective assessment of Nigeria’s prospects for realizing Vision 2020 are the following. Does Nigeria posses the knowledge stock and the type of technological capability that can kick start and sustain an industrial revolution in the style of China, India and the East Asian newly industrializing countries {NICS}? Within the twelve years or so that separate us from the magical year 2020 can Nigeria undertake the type of technological learning that underpins industrial revolutions? Can Nigeria evolve and sustain the types of economic, social and political institutions that have propelled the Asian economies cited above towards the global technological frontier?

I submit in this write-up that Vision 2020 will remain a dream, a slogan. But neither Nigeria’s past economic development record, nor current technological development trends, nor even the most optimistic projections of future trends, point to any possibility of ever attaining Vision 2020.

I predict that, as the year 2020 draws closer, the economic oracles in Aso Rock will quietly shift the target year to 2030; or most likely, they will repackage the slogan substituting yet another Vision to replace the failed Vision 2020. Remember ‘Housing for All by the year 2000?” That was the slogan that adorned policy speeches in the 1970s and 1980. That Slogan quietly disappeared from policy speeches as the year 2000 drew closer. Similar fate awaits Vision 2020.

Why do I dismiss Vision 2020 as mere political sloganeering, an unrealizable dream? I hinge my argument on the obvious fact that Nigeria currently faces huge deficits in the types of scientific and technological {S & T} manpower that underpin industrial revolutions. Nor are these deficits likely to be closed as the year 2020 draws closer. On the contrary, they are most likely to widen given the parlous state of our human capital infrastructure. Nigeria’s recent economic growth performance has been driven almost solely by price boom in crude oil exports with little input from productivity growth or technological progress. Economic theory and development shows that raw-material propelled economic growth is not often sustainable; nor has such growth ever led to industrial revolutions. The types of growth potential that underpinned industrial revolutions in history were sustained by continuously improving technological capability.

Can Nigeria shift its growth potential from one dependent almost entirely on raw-material exports to one built on continuously improving technological capability? Can Nigeria acquire the type of know-how that has enabled the Asia NICs, China and India to emerge into their current positions as active participants, not passive ones, in our evolving global knowledge economy? Yes, but if …

The 1980s onwards have become associated with the rise of a global knowledge economy – what The Economist of London terms the ‘soft revolution’, in which knowledge {know-how} is rapidly replacing physical and national capital as the main driver of economic development. In this evolving global knowledge economy, developing countries, who possess technological capability in the form of human capital and research and development {R & D} expertise to enable them to tap from expanding world technology stocks via technology transfer, will experience catch-up and convergence with the global technology leaders. Developing countries, which lack these technological resources, will fall behind and become passive, ineffective participants in the global knowledge economy. In this emerging global knowledge economy, the educational system has been identified as one of the drivers of economic and technological development, not only by producing the ‘brain workers’ who man it, but by providing its backbone, from laboratories to libraries to computer hardware. Is the Nigerian educational system equipped to play this catalytic role? My answer is an emphatic no.

A key effect of the rise of the global ‘knowledge economy’ is that the market values of natural and physical capitals have tended to fall as better and more efficient processes increase their supplies. Trade has become global thereby increasing the accessibility of raw materials; and markets have become linked electronically, which has reduced transaction and search costs. On the other hand, many natural–resources-scarce developing countries, who have the brain power and imagination to create new technologies through technology transfer, have flourished. The East Asian NICs, China and India provide good illustrations of how technology transfer can help developing countries to build new areas of comparative advantage and, hence, permitting them to participate actively, not passively, in the global knowledge economy.

Two types of evidence exist on the technological dynamism going on within domestic firms in the East Asian NICs, China and India and underpinned by foreign technology transfer. First, technologies already known in the OECD countries are being transferred to these countries and changed by continuing adaptation, improvement and development. Second, on the basis of the first, new areas of comparative advantage are being created in increasingly technology-intensive industries–e.g. electronics and electrical, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, machine tools, etc, using the multinational corporation {MNCs} and their foreign direct investment {FDI} as a learning process. Advances made by these countries in the global manufactured export markets in electronics and electrical, automobiles, machinery, information technology and financial services, etc have been largely set in motion and sustained by technology absorption from the M.N.C.S via FDI. Indeed, in all the Asian NICs, China and India sub- contracted production, joint ventures, strategic R & D alliances, etc have provided mechanisms for building national technological capability, , which has permitted these countries to increase, over time, their autonomous capacities in manufactured exports, especially high-technology exports. Currently, India is the second largest global exporter of computer software after the United States. China is the largest global exporter of electrical goods. South Korea joined the OECD back in 2000 and now boasts the largest export trade in electrical and electronic goods among Asian countries after Japan.

The central distinguishing element of the Asian industrial experience may be summarized thus: industrialization through enhancement of national technological capability oriented on ‘initiative’ or ‘adaptative’ R & D to develop competitive advantage in the ‘dynamic products’ in world experts. The catching–up Asian countries have tapped heavily from universities and firms in the OECD countries to develop enviable stocks of scientific and technological { S & T} manpower, apart from relying on the OECD countries to purchase patents. Rapid acquisition of in-house R & D capability by firms in these countries have permitted the latter to connect effectively with the global production networking of the MNCs, in many instances able to forge strategic R & D alliances with the MNCs.

Lester Thurow, erstwhile dean of MIT’s Sloan School of Management predicted some decades ago that in our current 21^st century there was bound to occur ‘historical shifts’ in wealth away from nations whose source of wealth and power is natural resources and physical capital to those who possess ‘brain power and imagination’ to create and organize new technologies to enable them chart new areas of comparative advantage.

I submit that the historical shifts Professor Thurow predicted for the 21^st century started well in the 20^th century in the 1970s, when the second-tier Asian NICs {South Kaua, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc} emerged to be followed in the 1980s by China and India.

Earlier, towards the close  of the 20^th century, precisely 1990, Japan’s powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry {MITI} had identified key technologies that were likely to shape the trajectory of future economic development in electronics, biotechnology, the new material science industries, telecommunications, civilian aircraft manufacturing, machine tools and robots, hardware and software computers, etc. MITI and its spokesmen insisted that, without exception these technologies are deeply rooted in three scientific revolutions: quantum physics, electronics, and biotechnology and DNA. MITI pointed out that these three scientific revolutions constitute the key to the scientific break-through; they are, also, the dynamic engines of wealth and prosperity; nations rise and fall economically and technologically depending on their ability to adopt and adapt these new technologies.

What is the current state of technological capability in Nigeria? What are the prospects for development of the knowledge stocks necessary and sufficient to kick start and sustain an industrial revolution?

As suggested already, Nigeria displays all the attributes of a ‘falling behind’ technology system: R & D expenditure as a percentage of GDP is less than O.I; the number of scientists and engineers in R & D {per million population} is less than 5; patents production is, of course, virtually zero; manufactured exports constitute less than 5 percent of total merchandize exports { and these are, in the main, processed and semi-processed raw materials}; and per capita income is about $400, which is less than Ghana’s $600 and less than 10 percent of Malaysia’s roughly $5000. Nigeria’s rather low score on S & T manpower provides indirect evidence of the economy’s weak innovation capability, and explains why Nigeria has, so far, been unable to put manufactured exports on the world market – not even on the ECOWAS market.

Nigeria’s R & D, apart from the low investment in that sector, is mainly state-controlled and government funded, located in government controlled parastatals and university faculties, and thus disconnected from industrial firms. Apart from the weak R & D- industry linkages, there is the equally worrisome problem of a weak and deteriorating human capital infrastructure, especially in S & T manpower. But Nigerian universities are characterized, without a single exception, by weak postgraduate programmes with little serious emphasis on acquisition of research capability.

Weak university-industry linkages mean that, among others, there is little private industry input into R & D funding in Nigerian universities, which, in turn, means that there is little interflow of knowledge between academia and private industry.

Because of gross and deteriorating deficits in S & T manpower, coupled with an underdeveloped industrial structure, whereby few Nigerian firms have evolved the corporate governance structure, networks and linkages that make them competitive on a global basis, there exists virtually no capability in patents, manufactured exports and linkages to foreign markets. Meanwhile, dependence on FDI and capital goods imports yield little technology transfer effect and productivity growth because of deficits in S & T manpower – a problem with deep roots in the weakness of the of human capital infrastructure, especially in tertiary education.

By the mid–1970s the institutional aspects of Nigeria’s educational system was beginning to undergo reform in an apparent effort to redress the observed deficits in S&T manpower in an expanding oil economy. The most important development here was that in 1974 the federal government took over the funding of education to attempt to redress the obvious structural imbalances in course enrolments as well as regional disparities in educational opportunities. More importantly, by the mid 1970s emphasis began to shift into technical education, reflected in expansion of intakes in the technical and vocational disciplines at the secondary and tertiary levels. In order to accommodate expansion in the technology and science disciplines specialized universities in technology and agriculture were established, apart from the polytechnics and colleges of education which were established to produce ‘middle-level’ manpower. Although these institutional reforms did improve tertiary enrolments in the science and technology disciplines, it is another matter when we come to the quality of the S & T manpower produced by our universities.

From the 1980s to date, the Nigerian educational system, as a whole, has evolved in the context of poor funding and deteriorating infrastructure, which, in turn, has led to declining morale and discontent among faculty and students alike. This situation has, in turn, resulted in massive ‘brain drain’ from the education sector as a whole, and, on the part of students {and sometimes faculty led by their unions}, in violent confrontations with the government often leading to prolonged closure of tertiary institutions.

Yet another constraint on Nigeria university development has been government policy contradictions and indecisions. The Nigerian government seems enthusiastic embracing the global trend in ‘massification’ in education whereby, , especially in the OECD countries,  the proportion of adults with higher education qualifications almost doubled between 1975 and 2000 from 22 to 44 percent. The Nigerian trend in ‘massification’ of education has been reflected, for instance, in the establishment of more state-funded universities, the Open University of Nigeria, and the encouragement of establishment of private universities. On the other hand, the Nigerian government seems unwilling to draw the necessary conclusion from the enthusiasm to embrace this ‘massification’ process, namely, that it should either provide sufficient funds to run the universities or allow them to charge realistic fees to finance investments in much needed infrastructure, incentive wages to academic staff, etc.  

Enwere Dike,

Department of Economics

Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka

Anambra State, Nigeria

Mobile phone: 07038868098/08058536856

E-mail: meidike@yahoo.com 

Robot  # 1 | 22.01.2009 00:13

A recurrent theme in policy speeches originating in Aso Rock these days revolves on Vision 2020. The latter embodies Nigeria’s blueprint for an industrial revolution, its aspiration to undergo catch-up. The Vision 2020 document predicts that by the year 2020 – some twelve years from now – Africa’s most populous nation and the world’s 6th largest crude oil exporter will have undergone the type of catch-up industrialization that will catapult it into the ranks of the 20 largest global economies.I submit in this write-up that Vision 2020 will remain a dream, a slogan. Neither Nigeria’s past economic development record, nor current technological development trends, nor even the most optimistic projections of future trends, point to any possibility of ever attaining Vision 2020. ...Read the full article.

Tony Ishiekwene  # 2 | 22.01.2009 09:35

Nigerians, and particularly the leadership like deceiving themselves! Like the writer pointed out Yar' Adua, Obasanjo and who ever takes over from them in continuously rigged elections would soon find out that 2020 is not far away. Indeed the year 2020 is just 11 eleven years away, not 12 years. Remember Shagari had a blind vision of "Housing for All by the year 2000." in the early 1980s. By year 2000, more Nigerians were homeless and sleeping under Oshodi bridge, and many other bridges across Nigeria that they were in 1981. Then the evil, kleptomaniac, General Abacha assembled some clowns in 1995/6 to fashion Vision 2010 with so many lofty goals. When they found this unrealisable, Obasanjo and Yar'Adua with Charles Soludo, the CBN governor, dusted it up and amended a few lines and they started shouting Nigeria will be among the top 20 economies by the year 2020. You are right they will shift the goal post as the year draws near. I have never seen a group of clownish, inept and corrupt leadership as Nigeria has been plagued with over the years. At least you see the "green shoots" of a plant that will grow in the springs! There is nothing on the ground-not even electricity that you can compare with what you have in Ghana, Togo or Burkina Faso-to suggest Nigeria will be among the top 100 indutrialised nation in the year 2050, forget about 2020, yet our leaders sleep and dream in delusion. In this emerging global knowledge economy, the educational system has been identified as one of the drivers of economic and technological development, not only by producing the ‘brain workers’ who man it, but by providing its backbone, from laboratories to libraries to computer hardware. Is the Nigerian educational system equipped to play this catalytic role? My answer is an emphatic no. Damn right where is the education to propel an industrial/Technological advancement. Our leaders do not even send their children to run down and poorly funded universities in Nigeria anymore yet they want "wonders." The bottom line is that we are not ready yet to even catch up with low-rated African countries. What you have is blurred vision: Somebody should tell them at Aso rock

charles4u  # 3 | 22.01.2009 09:46

=Tony Ishiekwene;316308> I have never seen a group of clownish, inept and corrupt leadership as Nigeria has been plagued with over the years. At least you see the "green shoots" of a plant that will grow in the springs! There is nothing on the ground-not even electricity that you can compare with what you have in Ghana, Togo or Burkina Faso-to suggest Nigeria will be among the top 100 indutrialised nation in the year 2050, forget about 2020, yet our leaders sleep and dream in delusion. Damn right where is the education to propel an industrial/Technological advancement. Our leaders do not even send their children to run down and poorly funded universities in Nigeria anymore yet they want "wonders." The bottom line is that we are not ready yet to even catch up with low-rated African countries. What you have is blurred vision: Somebody should tell them at Aso rock All true...Daft useless hopeless and foolish leaders saying rubbish.