Learning to Innovate in Nigeria's cable and wire manufacturing sub-sector: inferences from a firm-level case study

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 between the innovative activities of the firm - as evidence of its capability – and its knowledge acquisition methodology. These are discussed within the context of the firm’s stock of human capital. We found low technological innovation capability and high capability for organisational and marketing innovation. Preparedness for technological learning is relatively poor with staff training intensity of 5% and innovation intensity of 0.0075%. We therefore propose stronger interconnectedness of the National Innovation System and creation of industry specific structures that could enhance learning.Technological learning; sub-sector; Cable and Wire manufacturing industry

Innovation in Nigerian SMEs: types and impact

This paper 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 result found that the type of innovation that SMEs pursue is not a critical consideration in their performance. While there was no difference found in the focus of SMEs on either of product or process innovations, evidence showed that SMEs would focus more on incremental product and process innovations. Incremental innovation was found to be very important for Nigerian SMEs and a significant predictor of product quality and not of revenue. The authors conclude that SMEs chooses to pursue such innovations that most fit their strategies and available resources. Such level of innovation affords Nigerian SMEs to more extensively exploit the domestic market but cannot support extensive new product development required to enter export markets.innovation; small and medium enterprises; Nigeria; impact

Structural Breaks and Finance-Driven Growth Hypothesis in ECOWAS: Further Empirical Evidence

This study makes a cross sectional case in investigating the validity, or otherwise, of the finance-driven growth hypothesis in the ECOWAS countries using annual data from 1970 to 2008 for seven countries namely: Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo. In contrast to earlier studies on developing countries, this study specifically tests for the possibility of structural breaks/regime shifts in the finance-growth long run relationship by employing the Gregory and Hansen (1996) residual based test which accounts for endogenous structural break. While the Gregory-Hansen structural break cointegration result confirms the existence of cointegration relationships among the selected countries despite the breakpoints, the Granger-causality test result indicates a general pattern of causality running from financial development to economic growth in most of the countries. Also, the striking feature of the result of our estimated growth model generally lends credent to the importance of financial development in explaining growth dynamics among the selected countries, thus reinforcing the finance-driven growth hypothesis

Nigerian University Quality: Why the Hero Fails

This paper was designed to take an in-depth look into the establishment and practices of university education in Nigeria from 1960 to 2015, to investigate the reality of what caused Nigerian university education to gradually decline. The paper takes a critical realist approach to review the relevant literature in the field, and forming a base from which to answer the question of ‘why the hero fails\u27. Three major questions are raised, but not answered, in this paper, as three other papers focus solely on answering these questions. They are; where have things gone wrong? Where are things going wrong? and where may things continue to go wrong? This paper is particular about identifying areas where things are happening within the university sector. The findings reveal that not only is the quality of education declining, but human thinking on tasks, involvement/pro-activeness, and funding are also declining, a major reason why Nigerians ignorantly give way to corrupt practices, which slip in like wolves and continue to evolve the system

Trend Analysis of Teenage Pregnancy in Nigeria (1961-2013): How Effective is the Contraceptive Use Campaign

Teenage pregnancy (TP) is a recurrent global and public health problem. It poses both social and health challenges. Considering the massive campaign on the use of modern contraceptives to prevent TP in recent decades, we assessed trends in TP in Nigeria between 1961 and 2013. Pregnancy and contraception history of 70,811 women who were at least 20 years old when the Nigerian DHS was conducted in 1990, 2003, 2008, and 2013 respectively were used for the study, and descriptive statistics, time analysis techniques and multiple logistic regression were used to analyze the data at 5% significance level. The overall prevalence of TP between 1961 and 2013 was 49.5% which fluctuated insignificantly during the studied period. The TP prevalence among women who entered adulthood in 1961 was 39.2%; it peaked in 1978 at 58.9% before its unsteady decline to 39.6% in 2012, and then rose sharply to 55.6% in 2013. We predicted TP prevalence as 49.0%, 49.9% and 51.0% in 2014, 2015 and 2016 respectively. The odds of TP were over 4 times higher in the North East and 5 times higher in the North West than in the South West. Teenagers with no education had higher odds of TP and it was higher among teenagers from the poorest households (OR=5.64, 95% CI: 5.36-5.94). Rather than reducing with the worldwide acknowledged increase in contraceptive campaigns, TP increased over the years studied. As far as TP is concerned in Nigeria, the impact of the campaign on MC use is far from being effective. To achieve the objective of fewer TPs, fewer resources should be spent on access to contraception and instead diverted to areas more likely to achieve results such as improvements in educational achievement amongst girls

Structural breaks, parameter stability and energy demand modeling in Nigeria

This paper extends previous studies in modeling and estimating energy demand functions for both gasoline and kerosene petroleum products for Nigeria from 1977 to 2008. In contrast to earlier studies on Nigeria and other developing countries, this study specifically tests for the possibility of structural breaks/regime shifts and parameter instability in the energy demand functions using more recent and robust techniques. In addition, the study considers an alternative model specification which primarily captures the price-income interaction effects on both gasoline and kerosene demand functions. While the conventional residual-based cointegration tests employed fail to identify any meaningful long run relationship in both functions, the Gregory- Hansen structural break cointegration approach confirms the cointegration relationships despite the breakpoints. Both functions are also found to be stable under the period studied. The elasticity estimates also follow the a priori expectation being inelastic both in the long- and short run for the two functions

A Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation of Oil–Air Flow Between the Cage and Inner Race of an Aero-engine Bearing

In aeroengines the shafts are supported on bearings that carry the radial and axial loads. A ball bearing is made up of an inner-race, an outer-race and a cage which contains the balls, these together comprise the bearing elements. The bearings require oil for lubrication and cooling. The design of the bearing studied in this work is such that the oil is fed to the bearing through holes/slots in the inner race. At each axial feed location the oil is fed through a number of equispaced feedholes/slots but there is a different number of holes at each location. Once the oil has passed through the bearing it sheds outwards from both sides into compartments known as the bearing chambers. A number of studies have been carried out on the dynamics of bearings. Most of the analyses consider the contributions of fluid forces as small relative to the interaction of the bearing elements. One of the most sophisticated models for a cage-raceway analysis is based on the work of Ashmore et al. [1], where the cage-raceway is considered to be a short journal bearing divided into sectors by the oil feeds. It is further assumed that the oil exits from the holes and forms a continuous block of oil that exits outwards on both sides of the cage-raceway. In the model, the Reynolds equation is used to estimate the oil dynamics. Of interest in this current work is the behaviour of the oil and air within the space bounded by the cage and inner race. The aim is to determine whether oil feed to the bearing can be modelled as coming from a continuous slot or if the discrete entry points must be modelled. A Volume of Fluid Computational Fluid Dynamics approach is applied. A sector of a ball bearing is modelled with a fine mesh and the detailed simulations show the flow behaviour for different oil splits to the three feed locations of the bearing thus providing information useful to understanding oil shedding into the bearing chambers. The work shows that different flow behaviour is predicted by models where the oil inlets through a continuous slot compared to discrete entry holes. The form and speed of oil shedding from the bearing is found to depend strongly on shaft speed with the shedding speed being slightly higher than the cage linear speed. The break-up pattern of oil on the cage inner surface suggests smaller droplets will be shed at higher shaft speed

What Drives Innovation?: Inferences from an Industry-Wide Survey in Nigeria

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 found differences in the factors that drive them at the firm level. Our results further show that interactions matter more than most innovation-related variables and that the most important actors that influence a firm’s innovation efforts are its customers and suppliers. We conclude that product and process innovations are not mutually exclusive and that a major key to successful innovation is how and with whom a firm collaborates. The implication of this for firms and policy makers is that an effectively wired innovation system where all stakeholders are active is critical for firm-level innovation capability.innovation; drivers; manufacturing industry; Nigeria; determinants

A Coupled Euler-Lagrange CFD Modelling of Droplets-To-Film

In this paper, a droplet to film interaction model technique is presented. In the proposed approach, the liquid and gas continua are modelled using an enhanced Volume of Fluid (VoF) technique while the droplets are tracked using a Lagrangian framework and are coupled to the Eulerian phases using source terms. The eventual target application is an aeroengine bearing chamber in which oil is found as droplets, shed from the bearings, splashing on impact, separated from wall surfaces at obstacles or simply re-entrained, and as a continuum oil film coating the bearing chamber outer walls which it also cools. In finite volume CFD techniques, a prohibitively large number of cells would be required to describe the details of the droplet impact phenomenon. Based on published correlations, the splashing droplets are created and tracked as Lagrangian particles. The flowing film and the gas continua are handled with an enhanced Volume of Fluid technique