I have always been intrigued by the underlying reasons behind the stark differences between the rich and poor countries as well as that between rich and poor households, communities, towns and cities. I have been curious to understand why developed nations got wealthy and why poor nations lagged. As a young graduate I was very much involved with my country's industrialization efforts, especially the development of Nigeria's iron and steel and other industrial plants. The failure of these initiatives further heightened my curiosity and eventually led me to seek answers when I went off to pursue my doctorate degree at the Science and Technology Policy Studies Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, in the United Kingdom. I wrote my thesis applying development economics framework on “Technological Capability Acquisition: The Steel Industry in Nigeria.” While my focus in the early days was on the technological dimension of industrial capability acquisition, I was always fascinated by the writings of Simon Kuznets and Arthur Lewis on structural change.

Several years later, working as a consultant for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), I expressed my thoughts in a report as follows: “The industrial development process in the Twentieth Century is one in which backward countries and regions have employed extant technologies to overcome the wide gaps between them and the industrial forerunners. The key to the successful industrialization of countries that are now referred to ‘late- comers’ had been not only been willingness to imitate but also more importantly the will to learn” (UNECA 1997). In other words, technology transfer demands explicit investment on the part of the learner in order to acquire both formal and tacit knowledge. While the former is fairly easily acquired in the short term, the latter is the product of long- term learning- bydoing, expensive process of heuristics and the establishment of institutions of some sort that is a repository of institutional memory.

For the most part, African countries have neither redeemed their developmental promise nor fulfilled the great potential that natural resources and large deposit of minerals, petroleum and agricultural resources conferred. A number of African countries are endowed with a large population, a potential supply of skilled manpower and ready domestic market. Yet, despite the excitement over their economic potential at independence, most remain stuck in the low- income category.