Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
1. Attributes of the free market;
2. Respect and application of the rule of law; and
3. The use of science-based technology.
Now it is rich. The same thing, with the same consequences happened in North
America, and it is now happening in Asia. What about Africa? Indeed, Nigeria's
position is critical.
Nigeria in recent times has conducted a series of experiments to trigger the
development of its economy using technology:
• It has attempted to transfer technologies for the development of automobile
industries unsuccessfully;
• It has failed in developing an indigenous steel industry;
• Its failed attempts to mimic small-scale industrial infrastructure development
are still glaringly fresh;
• Numerous failed projects on industrial estates and complexes litter the nation;
• The strategies to deploy Technology/Trade Free Zones in enhancing technol-
ogy-based Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has not been as effective as desired;
• Recently a multimillion dollar investment free zone project named Tinapa was
completed and still awaits full functioning; and
• Presently, a national programme to establish and use Science and Technology
Parks for development has been mounted.
Science and Technology Parks have long been identified and applied as a
veritable tool for accelerated economic development. Although lessons on estab-
lishing S&T parks for development from many countries revealed numerous
evolution options, typically implementing S&T parks have been demonstrated to
be a medium- to long-term plan in nature. Furthermore, global S&T Parks
development revealed that Africa is nearly totally left out in this phenomenon. To
catch up, the continent requires an urgent and innovative ''leap-frogging'' meth-
odology. This chapter illustrates a model to evolve viable S&T parks in Nigeria.
At the onset, series of indices were used to analyse data acquired through a
detailed survey, to identify networks/clusters of STIs under the National S&T
Parks Development Programme launched by the Federal Ministry of Science and
Technology in 2006.
The programme implementation experiences so far have revealed a number of
challenges including intense and costly sensitisation required to maintain the
Government's understanding, keen interest and investments, resistance to the
required synergy and partnerships by related sectors/institutions to minimise
duplication, rivalry and enhance effectiveness of investments, weak government
policy implementation on incentives such as import substitution, local content drive
and consumable goods import deletion programmes, and the inability of the econ-
omy to attract non-oil/gas technology-based Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs).
These suggest the need for a modified approach towards STPs to evolve in Nigeria.
A close appraisal of the programme's experiences interestingly revealed the
opportunities where existing innovation clusters can be reversed engineered into
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