Nigeria’s Transition to Knowledge-Based Economy: A Triple Helix Approach*

Abstract

Within the last few decades, experience has shown that our world is now driven by knowledge and technology rather than by ideology. In order to be relevant and competitive therefore, countries design and implement development policies to complement the traditional determinants of productivity – labour, capital, materials and energy by incorporating knowledge and technology in their development trajectory.
In recent times, knowledge is incorporated more directly in theories and models of development under the general term New Growth Theories. There is a firm connection between the activities of the government and movement towards what the UK Department of Trade and Industry (1988) called "a knowledge driven economy (in which) the generation and exploitation of knowledge play the predominant part in the creation of wealth.” Today, over 60% of workers in the developing world are knowledge workers who contribute remarkably to the GDP of their countries (Obafemi, 2014). In the more developed countries of the world, the connection among higher education, especially Universities, Industry and Government (Triple Helix) has been credited with national and regional innovations; massive wealth creation and general economic successes (Laydesdorff and Etzkowitz, 1997; Todeva, 2013; Cai, 2014). In this framework, tertiary institutions are gradually regaining their position as viable drivers of social and economic change in countries (Etzkowitx, 2002; Safiulin, Fatkhiev and Grigorian, 2014).