Prof. Rose-Margaret Ekeng-Itua, a professor of engineering and founder of the African Technology and Innovation Institutes (ATII), was a panelist on the value addition session at the recent Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) AGM. She spoke exclusively to BizWatch Nigeria on what it takes for Nigeria to become an industrial hub, why its industrial policies fail to deliver, and what ATII plans for Africa.
What does it take for a country to be called an industrial hub, and how far is Nigeria from that today?
To be called an industrial hub, certain facets of the economy need to be in a very strong position. First, Nigeria needs a very strong manufacturing base. That leads to my second point, robust and resilient infrastructure. A skilled workforce is the third. These are the top three elements for identifying any country or region as an industrial hub.
But it doesn’t stop there. You also need technological capability and a competitive business environment. And you cannot work in a silo. All the great industrial hubs are conduits to global supply chains and fully integrated into them. You also need recognised industrial clusters that make for meaningful innovation, research and development.
Take the U.S.: Silicon Valley is a great technological cluster. Wherever you find industrial clusters, you find higher education, industry and government hovering over it all. In Silicon Valley you have the likes of Stanford and UC Berkeley, and that creates an industrial cluster.
Closer to home, The Lagos State University of Science and Technology (LASUSTECH)was at the MAN AGM. Around LASUSTECH there are companies in the ecosystem its students are being trained for. Some were doing mechatronics projects, some agro-processing projects.
[Editor’s note: LASUSTECH and MAN have signed an MOU, and LASUSTECH students showcased innovations at the AGM and the Made in Nigeria Expo.]
Lastly, we need large domestic and regional markets. There must be a lot of movement and activity in domestic and regional markets.
On a strong manufacturing base, look at Singapore, South Korea, China and Germany. You see their strength in automobiles, machinery, electronics and so on. We have to start moving up the manufacturing value chain if we want to be recognised as an industrial hub.
On infrastructure, road and logistics networks need to be reliable. That brings up industrial parks, which support collaboration because companies leverage each other’s infrastructure. Scattered, randomised plucking of infrastructure in Nigeria will not work. Here in California, in Fremont where I am, we have lots of industrial parks, and the companies leverage infrastructure together. That reduces the cost of manufacturing, and that’s why they’re successful.
On skilled workforce, ATII thrives on that. There is no way we can be identified as an industrial hub without pushing out large pools of technicians, engineers, scientists, and people in the digital and circular economy spaces. We also need production workers, and we must look at both the vocational and the higher education parts of further education, alongside secondary education. Both must go hand in hand. We cannot abandon vocational skills, and we also need the skill sets that require degrees. You can see the investment that the Chinese, Singaporean and Indian governments are making.
On technological capability, we need a great ecosystem of research and development and patenting. I heard that the African Union has set up what I think is a task force or working group to look at African patents. We have lots of great ad-hoc innovation coming out of Nigeria, but our patenting culture is lacking. An industrial hub needs well-documented patents that companies outside the country can pay royalties for. It is crucial that we have that technological capability, and that only comes from a good innovation ecosystem that thrives on R&D and patenting.
What distinguishes an industrial cluster from an industrial hub? We have Agbara, Ikeja, Sagamu, Ota and the free trade zones. What are they, and what needs to be done to upgrade them?
First, I want to applaud everyone in Agbara, Yaba and all the different areas for the industrialisation going on there, and Nigerians generally for our spirit of industrialisation.
Truth be told, we would categorise those areas as industrial parks. They are not industrial clusters. To be an industrial cluster, there needs to be a geographic concentration of related industries, suppliers, higher or further education, and research centres. Without that, they are industrial parks. It is great that we even have these sub-industrial parks, as we could call them.
What we need from government, and what we need policy for, is to develop those industrial parks into industrial clusters. We don’t necessarily need to establish universities there. There could be training centres and research centres. In the digital space we can do lots of things remotely, but there should be some higher education, training or further education system, and research centres, attached or connected to those industrial parks. The industries in those parks should also be related to each other. Then we can say we have an electronics industrial cluster in Yaba, or an XYZ industrial cluster in Aba. That is the main differentiating factor between industrial parks and industrial clusters. What we have now in the areas you described are industrial parks, not industrial clusters.
Does focusing on patenting limit innovation? Some argue Elon Musk open-sources his innovations and keeps moving to the next stage before others can master the first.
Whoever says that is totally wrong. Open source does have an altruistic side, and some companies are completely altruistic with their open-source platforms. But for most it is a market research strategy. When you make things open source, you give the whole world the ability to use and depend on your source code, and you get real-time feedback.
I work a lot with Tesla, and I take my students there on field trips. Tesla is really strict about its proprietary technology. Nobody can take photos of anything on the manufacturing floor. You sign NDAs and go through strict checks before you can enter any Tesla manufacturing floor.
So the idea that Elon Musk is making money because he doesn’t believe in patents is totally wrong. Tesla has lots of patents. Engineers working in Silicon Valley, at any meaningful company, create patents starting from the tooling and the manufacturing layout. They are patenting the process.
Nigeria’s Industrial policies and plans are crafted by capable professionals. What most often stops them from delivering?
On the logistics of implementing any policy, including industrial policy: once there is a policy, or an assembly bill that needs to be passed, it needs to be codified into law if it is to be meaningful. That is what happens here in the U.S., and in particular in California. I’m sure everyone has heard of the laws in California. That is what works, and it is what runs Silicon Valley and industrialisation, because it is codified into law. Just having an abstract national policy that is not codified into law doesn’t work. I think some of our policies are not codified into law, and that is one reason they fail. They have to be codified.
The second step is something I know first-hand. Although I am a professor of engineering, I was invited and appointed by the California State Senate to be on an assembly bill. It was a policy that was then codified into law and passed as an assembly bill. I was then invited to sit on the statewide implementation committee for that bill. That is where I think Nigeria fails to implement policy.
First, policies are not codified into law. Second, after they are codified, we do not have committees of experts, not just policymakers but experts in the field, sitting down to create the blueprint for the government on how to execute the law. As we go through the blueprint recommendations on how the policy should be implemented, we find that additional policies need to come out of the existing ones. On the committee I sit on, we have made several recommendations to the legislature, and they have passed additional laws in California because of our work. Next year will be our last term, a four-year process. By then we will have given the state of California a clear blueprint for implementing that assembly bill and the additional laws that came out of it. That is how you do it, and I think we do not have that system.
What is ATII planning in the next five years for Africa, and Nigeria in particular?
ATII is well positioned to support Africa’s industrial transformation. The questions you’ve asked me today about becoming an industrial hub are where ATII is positioned to support Nigeria and Africa in becoming an industrial hub to be reckoned with. That includes policy: ATII is well versed in policy framing and advocacy. ATII is also well positioned for skills and workforce development, which is where we have thrived the most.
We have partnered with a company in Kenya to train 30,000 youth in AI by 2035. We are positioned to support the continent’s thriving youth population, including in Nigeria, to be the workforce of the future that other industrial hubs look to. Africa is the youngest continent in the world and will continue to be through this century and further. It is important that we have a properly trained workforce that can support industrialisation and technology integration, and help the continent and Nigeria become an industrial hub, whether in robotics, automation, Industry 4.0 and 5.0, or artificial intelligence. That is where ATII is positioned to support the continent and Nigeria in our industrial transformation.
About Prof. Rose-Margaret Ekeng-Itua
Prof. Rose-Margaret Ekeng-Itua is a Nigerian-born professor of engineering and the founder of ATII. She has been widely reported as the first Black woman to earn a PhD in cybernetics. Her career spans more than two decades across Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States, with a focus on narrowing the gender and diversity gap in STEM and building partnerships between academia and industry.
The African Technology and Innovation Institutes (ATII) is a research-driven technology innovation, deployment and capacity-building company focused on Africa’s industrial challenges. It pairs sustainable technology solutions with workforce development. Its stated vision is to drive Africa’s transformation through innovation, and its mission is to turn ideas into practical solutions, bridge research and industry, and build skills.
