Abiodun Egbetokun

• PhD Economics
• Senior Lecturer at De Montfort University

A persistent critique of standard science, technology and innovation (STI) indicators is that they remain reliant on concepts and theories transposed from the literature on STI in high-income countries. It is widely recognized that their relevance for African countries is limited, so we may not be measuring what we should be measuring, to promote d...

This chapter discusses how Generative AI (GenAI) can be used to enhance summative assessments. There is an ongoing debate around the continued effectiveness and integrity of conventional summative assessment methods such as written essays and end-of-unit exams. Critics argue that summative tests promote rote learning while summative essays are no l...

This chapter explores the use of Generative AI (GenAI) for formative learning and assessment, highlighting its advantages in the context of resource and time demands of implementation in the absence of GenAI. The chapter therefore discusses a number of techniques and approaches through which GenAI can be deployed for interactive feedforward and unl...

This chapter introduces the overarching aim of the book, in the wake of heightened public interest and the excitement and then consternation, among higher education practitioners, that followed the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 by OpenAI, and subsequent unveiling of similar GenAI products. The chapter provides an overview of the emergence of g...

This chapter provides reflections on three key areas that will shape the future of generative AI in higher education. Firstly, it highlights the need for higher education practitioners to embrace the technology in order to harness its benefits in their own practice and positively influence its responsible use by learners. Secondly, the chapter also...

This chapter examines the ethical and responsible use of generative AI (GenAI), such as ChatGPT, in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). It highlights the growing interest among students and educators in integrating AI tools into their learning and teaching practices. To navigate the ethical, social, and technical complexities of embedding GenAI i...

This chapter explores how generative AI (GenAI) technologies like ChatGPT can significantly increase student engagement in specific contexts with practical illustrations, such as utilising ChatGPT to generate adaptable learning materials, personalised study plans, and interactive educational tools to meet individual learning requirements. Firstly,...

This chapter explores how educators can use generative AI (GenAI) to support and enhance both the development of teaching content and the preparation to deliver the content. The chapter begins with a conceptualisation of teaching as a combination of routine tasks which can be easily automated and specialised tasks in which the nuanced knowledge, ex...

A high rate of youth unemployment is one of the toughest problems facing African countries and which threatens the attainment of the sustainable development goals. Entrepreneurship education interventions are thought to be helpful in creating entrepreneurs whose activity will ultimately help to reduce the burden of youth unemployment. However, do s...

A high rate of youth unemployment is one of the toughest problems facing African countries and which threatens the attainment of the SDGs. Entrepreneurship education interventions are thought to be helpful in creating entrepreneurs whose activity will ultimately help to reduce the burden of youth unemployment. However, do such interventions work es...

ChatGPT, a state-of-the-art chatbot built upon Open AI's generative pre-trained transformer, has generated a major public interest and caused quite a stir in the higher education sector, where reactions have ranged from excitement to consternation. This paper therefore examines the potential impact of ChatGPT on learning and assessment, using the e...

ChatGPT, a cutting-edge chatbot powered by Open AI's advanced generative pre-trained transformer (GPT-4), has sparked significant interest and stirred debate within the higher education sector. With a staggering 175 trillion parameters, GPT-4 stands as one of the largest and most potent natural language processing AI models, surpassing its predeces...

This dataset presents longitudinal data collected through four surveys (in six-monthly intervals) of fresh university and polytechnic graduates in Nigeria. The data were collected from 21,940 unique young men and women who underwent National Youth Service Corps ( nysc ) programme across ten states in Nigeria. The nysc programme is a compulsory one-...

ChatGPT, a state-of-the-art chatbot built upon Open AI's generative pre-trained transformer (GPT-3), has generated a major public interest and caused quite a stir in the higher education sector, where reactions have ranged from excitement to consternation. With approximately 175 billion parameters at its command, GPT-3 is one of the largest and mos...

This project is one of eight funded within the Boosting Decent Employment for Africa’s Youth initiative. The focus is on how to stimulate and sustain private economic activity in the form of new businesses among young persons in Africa's most populous country – Nigeria. The premise is simple: private economic activity, particularly entrepreneurship...

Coopetition is considered an important strategy for innovation. However, the literature provides limited evidence on how coopetition relates to innovation in service sector, particularly in emerging markets. Moreover, little is known about the effects of the formal and informal aspects of coopetition on innovation and how absorptive capacity of fir...

Coopetition is considered an important strategy for innovation. However, the literature provides limited evidence on how coopetition relates to innovation in service sector, particularly in emerging markets. Moreover, little is known about the effects of the formal and informal aspects of coopetition on innovation and how absorptive capacity of fir...

Understanding the research–policy nexus in developing economies requires knowing who disseminates and how social science research (SSR) is diffused. Based on survey and secondary data on a diverse set of critical stakeholders, this paper characterises the SSR diffusion landscape in Nigeria. We find that university researchers are the most active di...

Nigeria has a very large research system, with nearly 200 universities that employed more than 60,000 academic staff at the end of 2019. The country is also one of Africa’s largest producers of scientific research across all disciplines, surpassed only by South Africa and Egypt. In the social sciences, in particular, Nigeria is Africa’s second-larg...

This pooled dataset presents data collected through four (4) sequential cross-sectional surveys of undergraduates in six (6) selected Nigerian universities. The data were collected from a total of 12,615 undergraduates studying courses in the social sciences, sciences and engineering disciplines. The surveys assessed entrepreneurship interest, back...

Since the discovery of crude oil in commercial quantities in Nigeria, the country’s economy became heavily dependent on the commodity at the expense of agricultural produce and solid minerals that sustained the economy during the colonial era. This dependence on crude oil precipitated stagnation or decline in most other sectors of the economy, ther...

Technology Audit of Selected Economic Sectors of Nigeria

Entrepreneurship, innovation and development research often rely on survey data. High-quality national survey data enable researchers to answer a wide array of policy-relevant questions but are sparse in developing countries. Small surveys help to fill the gap but are generally difficult to implement. This chapter highlights four major challenges t...

COVID-19 has had huge impacts on households across the world. The economic impact is particularly large in Africa. This paper analyses the role of social protection in mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on household welfare measured in terms of ability to afford food. The results of panel logit regressions on data from 1925 Nigerian households show...

This infographics summarizes the findings from the Doing Research Assessment in Nigeria.

This dataset presents data collected from three surveys, each among researchers, research administrators and policymakers across the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria. The data were collected from 513 researchers, 118 research administrators and 60 policymakers drawn from randomly selected organizations that are implicated in Social Science Researc...

Understanding the research-policy nexus in developing economies requires knowing who disseminates and how social science research (SSR) is diffused. Based on surveys, interviews and secondary data on a diverse set of critical stakeholders, this paper characterises the SSR diffusion landscape in Nigeria. We find that university researchers are the m...

Nigeria has a very large research system and is one of Africa's largest producers of scientific research. In the social sciences, the country is the second largest producer of published research. However, the country's research production in the social sciences does not match the size of the social science research system. After quantifying the vol...

This dataset is freely available on Mendeley data here http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/g2wstgcgwc.1

COVID-19 has had huge impacts on households across the world. The economic impact is particularly great in Africa. This paper analyses the role of social protection in mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on household welfare measured in terms of ability to afford food. The results of panel logit regressions on data from 1 925 Nigerian households show...

This paper investigated the relationship between entrepreneurial training , entrepreneurial skills and new venture performance in Northern Nigeria where, in recent years, Boko Haram terrorist insurgency has precipitated a severe humanitarian crisis and a high level of disruption to economic activities. The study is based on a new survey data from a...

The Doing Research in Nigeria country report is an assessment of the social science research system in Nigeria, with particular attention given to the factors that affect the production, dissemination and uptake of social science research for sustainable development. The research process employs a mixed method approach that involved three inter-rel...

The quantity and complexity of scientific and technological information provided to policymakers have been on the rise for decades. Yet little is known about how to provide science advice to legislatures, even though scientific information is widely acknowledged as valuable for decision-making in many policy domains. We asked academics, science adv...

Increasingly, businesses in the 21st century have to grapple with the challenges of operating in turbulent environments characterised by market volatility, political instability, and terrorism. These challenges are relevant to developing countries, where institutional weaknesses exacerbate environmental turbulence; and developed countries, where, f...

Using innovation survey data on a sample of UK manufacturing firms, Laursen and Salter (Open for innovation: The role of openness in explaining innovation performance among UK manufacturing firms. Strategic Management Journal, 27:131–150, 2006) documented a non-monotonous relationship between external search strategies and firm-level innovative per...

This paper gives an overview of organizational innovation practices within the context of a developing country, Nigeria. Using innovation survey data from 2008 and 2011, the paper provides an analysis of the complementarity or otherwise of organizational innovation practices used by manufacturing and service firms in the country. The consistent co-...

This concluding piece to the special issue outlines how nations and firms can capitalise on their resources and capabilities towards meeting the 21st century challenges of doing business in Africa. The paper outlines key requirements, including human capital formation, technology transfer, frugal innovation and learning from other nations. We also...

Theoretically, human capital is conclusively believed to be positively related with economic growth. While empirically, the said relationship does not always hold for several reasons. Thus, the current paper presents new results on a set of conditions under which human capital is robustly and positively associated with economic growth. Using data f...

The continued relevance of the systems approach to the study of innovation, especially in developed countries, has been the subject of recent discourses. This paper argues that with respect to developing countries, discussions on innovation systems are yet to be exhausted. Against this background, the paper takes an objective look at the innovation...

This article analyses entrepreneurial interest and practice as well as the impact of an education policy among a representative sample of highly educated young Nigerians. We use pooled cross-sectional data from 2007 and 2011 on about 27,000 undergraduates in over 50 schools. Our descriptive analyses reveal a high prevalence of interest in entrepren...

This paper contributes to intellectual discourse on the impact of barriers to firms’ innovative performance and external search strategies in the context of a developing country. Using data from the 2011 Nigeria’s innovation survey in the manufacturing sector, we tested three hypotheses: the relationship between barriers and firms’ innovativeness,...

Access to quality science, technology and innovation (STI) information by lawmakers, as one of the key determinants of the effectiveness of policies in sub-Saharan Africa, has generated much debate. The main objective of this article therefore is to examine the sources of, and access to, STI information available to lawmakers in Nigeria. We also in...

This project evaluated entrepreneurial interest among university undergraduates in Nigeria and the role of compulsory entrepreneurship education in forging this interest. Most undergraduates in Nigeria would like to start their own business but only a handful of them currently do so. Compulsory entrepreneurship education stimulates entrepreneurial...

This special issue compiles papers from across the African continent, ranging from Tanzania and Ethiopia in the East to Nigeria in the West.11. These papers were selected after a thorough double-blind review process. Two independent reviewers assessed each paper and several of the papers had to undergo multiple review rounds. We are immensely grate...

The rapid advancement of technologies is one key factor propelling the current pace of global business. Technology is also playing an undeniable role in driving business opportunities and growth in developing countries. In this context, Africa is emerging at the forefront in contemporary debates about the adoption and adaptation of new and old tech...

In this paper we endeavour to assess the role of governance as a precondition to human capital-led growth. Specifically, we use rule of law, control of corruption, regulatory quality and government effectiveness as indicators of governance in addition to a variable representing the average of the four governance indicators. We divided our data samp...

This paper extends the existing literature on strategic R&D alliances by presenting a model of innovation networks with endogenous absorptive capacity. The networks emerge as a result of dynamic cooperation between firms occupying different locations in the knowledge space. Partner selection is driven by absorptive capacity which is itself influenc...

We present and analyse firm-level innovation data from Kenya and Nigeria. We test for the existence of complementarities between internal R&D and external innovation activities, and between organizational and marketing innovations. Some evidence is found on the existence of complementarities between internal and external technological innovation st...

The pooled cross-sectional dataset (1359 firms in total) available for download has some specific features: * The dataset includes data from wave 1 (2005-2007) and wave 2 (2008-2010) of the Nigerian innovation surveys. * The year variable identifies the different survey waves. Wave 1 was completed in 2008 and wave 2, in 2011. * The service varia...

A positive relationship between firms' networking activities and innovativeness has been consistently established in the literature on innovation. However, studies considering different innovation types, and on developing countries are scarce. This paper addresses questions concerning the relationship between networking strategies and innovativenes...

Knowing why and when young persons want to be entrepreneurs is relevant for development policy in the face of high unemployment. This paper by Adelowo, Egbetokun, and James (2015) presents a descriptive assessment of entrepreneurial interest and activity among a large sample of Nigerian undergraduates. 84% of young Nigerians expressed interest in b...

Cooperation can benefit and hurt firms at the same time. An important question then is: when is it better to cooperate? And, once the decision to cooperate is made, how can an appropriate partner be selected? In this paper we present a model of inter-firm cooperation driven by cognitive distance, appropriability conditions and external knowledge. A...

The literature maintains that in the development models of the Asian tigers in the 1980s, policy-induced intermediaries played the key mediating roles in acquiring technology from abroad to enhance local capabilities. In this paper, we examined how the intermediaries fare in terms of their expected brokerage roles in the context of the Taiwanese bi...

This paper examined the factors associated with the accumulation of technological capability among metalworking firms in Nigeria. A questionnaire was administered to 200 firms, of which 133 (66.5%) responded. Data were gathered on internal and external factors which are believed to influence capability build-up in the firms. The empirical evidence...

Using innovation survey data on a sample of UK manufacturing firms, Laursen and Salter [2006] documented a non-monotonous relationship between external search strategies and firm-level innovative performance. We find partially similar results in a combined sample of Nigerian manufacturing and service firms. A major discrepancy is that external sear...

Cooperation can benefit and hurt firms at the same time. An important question then is: when is it better to cooperate. And how can an appropriate partner be selected? In this paper we present a model of inter-firm cooperation driven by cognitive distance, appropriability conditions and external knowledge. Absorptive capacity of firms develops as a...

Using data from the 2008 innovation survey of Nigerian manufacturing firms, this paper assesses firms' search strategies and their relationship with innovative performance. Tobit regression was used to test the hypotheses regarding the relationships between breadth, depth, probable over-search of knowledge sources and innovative performance. The re...

Taking the pioneer efforts made in Nigeria as a case, this paper discusses the challenges associated with undertaking R&D surveys in a developing country. The 2006/2007 survey of R&D activities in Nigeria was carried out in both the higher education and government sectors, using the Frascati Manual as guide. In all, 75 universities and 62 research...

This paper extends the existing literature on strategic R&D alliances by presenting a model of innovation networks with endogenous absorptive capacity. The networks emerge as a result of bilateral cooperation over time between firms occupying different locations in the knowledge space. Social capital is ignored, and firms ally purely on the basis o...

The specific factors that influence the entrepreneurial inclination of students were studied with a view to propose appropriate policy measures on entrepreneurship within tertiary institutions. The sample for the study consisted of 7,560 students from a total of 25 tertiary institutions with 83% response rate. While we found that entrepreneurial in...

Technology business incubation is a programme mostly deployed by the nations of the world to promote the development of prototype technology, nurturing them until they can compete successfully with the existing technology. The programme of incubation need be monitored, controlled, and evaluated to ensure that the objectives are achieved. This chapt...

Analyzing the relationship between firms’ openness to external knowledge and their innovation performance is nothing new. What is new is studying how this relationship fares in latecomer economic contexts such as Nigeria, and that is the focus of this paper. Using unique micro-level innovation data, it is shown, as the existing literature suggests,...

This study explored the factors that explain innovation capability in SMEs in developing countries. This is important given the increasing global pressures that these SMEs have to face. The data employed came from a survey of Cable and Wire manufacturing firms in Nigeria. The important factors that accounted for innovation performance were firm-lev...

Understanding the types of innovations that SMEs currently undertake, and their commitment to innovation, is especially useful for policy making in developing countries. This paper, therefore, addressed two main questions: What types of innovation occur in SMEs? How intense is innovation in SMEs? We have used empirical information from a census car...

This essay reviews some growth models incorporating human capital, and estimates the role of human capital accumulation in per capita GDP in Nigeria. A significant negative relationship was found between proxies of human capital accumulation (education and health investments).

In this paper, we examine the environmental scanning strategy of manufacturing companies in southwestern Nigeria against the background that manufacturing companies in Nigeria exist in a challenging environment characterised by high import dependency, inappropriate policies, lack of transparent governance and weak industrial capabilities. Empirical...

In today’s increasingly knowledge-driven world, science and technology (S&T) are the inseparable twin keys to progress and industrial growth as against the resource endowment of the past. Apparently, without scientific knowledge and its application the economy of a nation or an organisation either remains stagnant or declines. Consequently, most co...

This paper focuses on an issue relatively unexplored in previous studies: the relationship between networking and external linkages and firm-level innovative performance in developing economies. Data was sourced from an innovation survey that targeted 250 manufacturing firms in Nigeria. The results show that openness in terms of collaboration and t...

For nations to compete successfully in the long run, they must innovate; and innovating entails building new competencies, new capabilities and new knowledge. Starting with a brief review of the concepts of Science, Technology and Innovation, this chapter discusses the factors militating against the translation of scientific R&D outputs into innova...

Food crop production is intricately linked to climate and weather. Any significant change in the two natural factors could affect crop production. Quite a number of scientific literatures now agree that over the coming decades, higher temperatures and changing in precipitation regimes caused by climate change will affect crop yields in many countri...

Even though it is not yet certain how climate change will affect Nigeria, the recent changes in rainfall regime could be an indication of some of the challenges that we may face as we move into the 21st century. At present, the Nigerian economy is largely dependent on fossil fuel, which is one of the biggest contributors of CO 2 to the atmosphere....

This paper presents an appropriate model for Science and Technology Parks (STPs) with a view to helping policy makers and STP managers implement and manage STPs. The authors reorganize and prioritize the Cabral-Dahab Science Park Management Paradigm. We identify three critical groups of actors (determinants, reactors and executors) and develop four...

This article seeks to explore the types of innovation that are predominant in SMEs in developing countries and to investigate the impact of these innovations on different dimensions of firm performance based on an industry-wide innovation survey carried out in Nigeria in 2007. Although innovation is important for superior firm performance, our resu...

The existing linkages between Nigerian universities, research institutes, industries and government is ad hoc and hence research products and innovations have suffered neglects. Potential viable researches remain in the laboratory without getting to the potential users who could take such to the market. Literature have reiterated the barriers milit...

This paper focuses on the potentials of the internet in facilitating research in Nigerian universities. We assess the readiness of undergraduates in Nigerian tertiary institutions to deploy the internet for research purposes. The data provides evidences on the capacities and capabilities of the existing facilities, human resources and the readiness...

This paper focuses on the potentials of the internet in facilitating research in Nigerian universities. We assess the readiness of undergraduates in Nigerian tertiary institutions to deploy the internet for research purposes. The data provides evidences on the capacities and capabilities of the existing facilities, human resources and the readiness...

Firm performance is known to be connected to firm-level innovation capability. Innovation capability, in turn, is an output of technological learning. This paper evaluates technological learning among firms in the Cable and Wire manufacturing sub-sector in Nigeria, using a purposively selected case firm. We developed a model of the relationship bet...

This chapter seeks to make some contributions to the literature on firm-level innovation in Africa by attempting to identify the significant factors that explain the capability of firms in Nigeria to innovate using the results of an industry-wide study. We focused on the product and process innovation activities of firms between 2003 and 2006 and f...

This study evaluates the impact of the Small and Medium Enterprises Equity Investment Scheme (SMEEIS) on the growth of Nigerian SMEs. Questionnaires and interviews were used to sample firms and commercial banks in Lagos, an industrially active environment. Uncoordinated business plans and poorly packaged projects were found to be the most significa...

Primary Track Number: Track 19 Secondary Track Number: Track 16 The reason why the leading economies of the world today are the ones with the strongest industrial bases is not unconnected with the capability of their industrial sectors to innovate. It is therefore important for any nation to establish the strengths and weaknesses of its industrial...

This research borders on assessing teachers’ competences in the use of ICT tools in teaching and research in Nigeria. Two common ICTs: the computer and the internet were selected, and the skills and attitudes of teachers in 7 Nigerian higher Institutions were assessed. About 760 questionnaires were distributed to 7 higher institutions comprising 4...