Oluyomi Ola-David Insights

A frica’s demographics, emergent middle class and rich natural resource endowments has made it a toast of trade and investment, with traditional partners in Europe and emerging partners from global south. Notably, the structure of Africa post-colonization has been toward resource extraction and being feeders for developed countries’ industries.  However, as south-south cooperation deepens, new models of development assistance, trade and investment are emerging. In the past, development assistance held most African countries bound to the whims and caprices of their respective western donors, mostly OECD countries.  Also, most of the bilateral and multilateral development assistance to developing countries came with stringent conditionalities, such as the structural adjustment programme (SAP), which produced a long term backwash effect. Consequently, for many low-income as well as post-conflict and fragile African states, aid-dependency is still a present reality. 

At different points in time, while exercising my pedestrian rights walking through zebra crossings on a serene campus, I have almost been knocked down by moving vehicles!  Sometimes other ‘ignorant and unlearned’ motorists yell out at your effrontery to walk through a zebra crossing when you can see them approaching!    At other times I have also noted the plight of several pedestrians who ‘love their lives’ having to wait at zebra crossings while impatient motorists drive by.  Interestingly, I recently read incidences of disregard for the road culture of giving pedestrians the right of way at zebra crossings in Egypt, as documented by an Egyptian blogger.  Thinking on these recurrent phenomena, I question the effectiveness of training offered at driving schools in instilling civil road behaviour. Whereas in some developed societies, the process of obtaining a driver’s license is one of the ‘biggest deals’ ever, for some African countries, especially Nigeria, the giant

Small business growth has been widely acknowledged an engine of economic growth and industrialization, from highly industrialized countries to South East Asian exemplars. Accordingly, empirical evidence is replete which show the essence of entrepreneurship development in the proliferation of small and medium scale enterprises.  European governments, in the wake of the Euro zone crisis and beyond, perceive entrepreneurship as a vehicle of job creation and steady economic growth, and provide supportive policies to foster entrepreneurship development.  Also, there are a number of conceptual models that link government initiatives for entrepreneurship education with poverty alleviation. Besides, i n countries of Africa where the rate of population growth oversteps employment growth, promoting entrepreneurship is both desirable for employment creation and as a strategy for poverty alleviation. Consequently, several public policies of African countries have begun to pay incr

Without trying to pre-empt the ‘xy’ agenda of Nigeria’s incoming administration led by President-elect General Buhari, I write this note because of my belief in the philosophy of change. Bottom-line, philosophies of change become the unique selling points of every individual, group and society. It is what drives individuals and communities to reach beyond the stars. Everyone who has left indelible marks, on the sands of history believed their actions (or inactions) could cause a change spiral. With a well-defined philosophy of change, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew led Singapore from third world to first. I believe national leadership is a call to true statesmanship and a responsibility to tend and keep the ‘national garden’, for the common and greater good. This calls for a team of noble people united by a dream of creating a sustainable future. Sometimes ideas that positively change the course of history are not populist and economic progress can be made to happen by sh