O. Isola

Universities and Research Institutes are key components of the National Innovation System (NIS) responsible for creating economic opportunities and wealth in nations. The capabilities of each component and the strength of their interactions determine the extent of wealth creation, economic development and global competitiveness of individual nations. The Universities and Research Institutes are responsible for generating and imparting new knowledge, and within the domains of Science & Technology (S&T), developing new ideas that can be transformed to the market by Industry. In Nigeria, budgetary allocation to S&T rose from N 1.5 billion (US$ 0.01 billion) in 1998 to N 16 billion (US$ 0.11 billion) in 2006, representing a 730% in 8 years. As impressive as the figures look, they represented only 0.11% of GDP. Furthermore, Nigeria only accounts for 0.01% of global expenditure on R&D, her Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) ranking is 94 (out of 134 nations), and she has no university in ...

... 1 SME and MSME are used interchangeably ... knowledge support institutions and to absorb new knowledge, low capacity to understand the requirement and procedure for accessing support, and management practices that makes them ineligible to access support funds. ...

Abstract: In spite of the increasing globalisation of technology, the involvement of developing countries in producing new technologies and innovations is almost negligible. The production of technological knowledge is concentrated in industrialised countries and developing nations are still lagging behind. It is therefore imperative for developing countries to look inwards to deploy science, technology and innovation (STI) in specific areas where they have comparative advantage. These comparative advantages could ...