Professor Oyebanji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka (OOO) is a renowned development economist, and the first Nigerian professor of Industrialisation, Innovation, and Technology Policy. He is the immediate Senior Special Adviser on Industrialisation at the African Development Bank. He was recently appointed Chairman, Ladoke Akintola University Technology (LAUTECH) Teaching Hospital. He spoke with GREGORY AUSTIN NWAKUNOR on how can Africa foster a culture of innovation to drive sustainable economic growth.

Congratulations on your 71st birthday. What is the most remarkable moment across these seven decades?

“THERE were many exhilarating moments, naturally. Professionally, the days I graduated from University of Ife and that day when I defended my PhD thesis. The external examiner told me: ‘Banji this is a great thesis, it deserves to be read by a larger audience, get it published.’ Reaching 71 feels both humbling and enlightening. Being alive is by God’s amazing Grace. Personally, I am so grateful to God. Also, watching the continent’s youth confidently design, build, and export knowledge-based solutions is deeply gratifying—it represents the culmination of what many of us only dreamed of decades ago. Despite all our troubles, we have several unicorns mostly fintech doing remarkably well,” he said.

How do you balance your demanding professional roles with personal life, and what keeps you motivated?

“Balance is never perfect, but purpose helps. Family, faith, and the mentorship of young scholars give me strength. Seeing progress—even incremental—reminds me why I began this journey: to prove that Africa’s development narrative can be re-written through intelligence, diligence, and audacity. My faith and family are very central. A strong family foundation rooted in scriptural principles helps steer the Journey.”

You wonder, as the first Nigerian Professor in Industrialisation, Innovation and Technology Policy, what were the challenges he faced, and how did you overcome them?

He had this to say: “There were two major hurdles: conceptual misunderstanding as to why a nation needs experts who have deep connections to engineering and economics and of course, institutional inertia. Many colleagues could not initially see how technological capability building relates to economic structure or how innovation policy differs from industrial policy. Over time, I learned to build coalitions, translate academic frameworks into actionable strategies, and show results that spoke louder than theory. Persistence and patience were indispensable. At the personal level, in the early days, a friend asked me: ‘You are a brilliant fellow, how will you even get a job dabbling into this thing nobody understands.’ It was his way of saying that I was wasting my talent. I was fully persuaded of my mission. I ended up encouraging several young people to follow this discipline and I am glad we have several master’s and doctorate level people trained both while I was at The Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER) and at the United Nations University-Institute for New Technologies (UNU_INTECH), Maastricht, Netherlands.”

He added, “my deepest wish is that my work demonstrates how Africa’s transformation must be knowledge-led, innovation-driven, and institutionally grounded. If my scholarship and advisory work have helped bridge the gap between theory and practice—between policy documents and tangible factories, startups, and research networks—then I would consider that a legacy worth leaving.”

Oyelaran-Oyeyinka had first class in chemical engineering as best graduating student from the University of Ile-Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. He completed his master’s degree in the same subject at the University of Toronto, which Chemical Engineering Department was ranked third in all North America. His switch to development economist was, as he believes, a divinely guided move not out of an inability to continue in engineering.

“My professional life is a journey of periodic changes and learning new things in leadership but most satisfying,” he confessed.
Sharing pivotal moments in his career that shaped his focus, he said three stand out. “First, witnessing the collapse of early industrial experiments in Nigeria in the 1980s showed me that national autonomous technology capacity—not raw investment dollars—was the missing piece. At the Ajaokuta Steel plant where I started my career, the moment the foreign contractors withdrew, construction ceased and ultimately that was the end of the project. Second, my doctoral research, which connected industrial policy to institutional learning, convinced me of the importance of adaptive governance.

My thesis looked at technology acquisition in Nigeria and that working through the different factors that shape the trajectory of nations, leadership stood out as an indispensable ingredient for nation building and economic development. And third, working at the United Nations and the African Development Bank (AfDB) revealed how fragile progress can be when finance is unavailable to build infrastructure and innovation capacity; and when these are not aligned with high-skill human capital.”

He said academia taught him to look for patterns behind problems. In policy work, that translates into identifying structural constraints rather than chasing symptomatic fixes. “My research background guides me to base recommendations on evidence and comparative learning—understanding why South Korea or Malaysia succeeded, but also why Africa must chart its own path rather than imitate.”
He said industrialisation is the engine of inclusive growth—it creates jobs, diversifies exports, and builds productive capacity.

The member of the Advisory Council on Industrialisation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) said: “The AfCFTA provides the continental platform to scale industries beyond narrow national markets. By harmonising standards, reducing intra-African tariffs, and aligning infrastructure, AfCFTA can transform Africa’s 1.4 billion people into a coherent industrial market capable of attracting investment and nurturing regional value chains.”

For him, the most pressing barriers to industrialisation in Africa are infrastructure deficits, particularly energy and logistics; skills mismatch, where education does not produce technically capable graduates and fragmented policy frameworks, often reactive rather than strategic.
According to him, “the solution lies in industrial ecosystems—coordinated investment in power, transport, skills, and finance around specific sectors. No country industrialises by accident; it happens through concerted design. It happens through strong leadership.”

He says many people erroneously believe that countries like South Korean conglomerates like Samsung just evolved as a matter of accident. No. “Korea’s industrialization was built on domestically owned chaebols (small family businesses) that have become global juggernauts. A chaebol often consists of multiple diversified affiliates, controlled by a person or group. Several dozen large South Korean family-controlled corporate groups.”

Oyelaran-Oyeyinka said in the mid-1960s liberalisation by the country deliberately excluded foreign direct investment initially owing to fear of Japanese competition. Korea has fewer multinationals than almost any other late-industrialising country, and this strengthened the state’s capacity to discipline private firms and build domestic science and technology capability. Government-chaebol cooperation was essential to the subsequent economic growth and astounding successes that began in the early 1960s.

In 2025, the revenue of the top four chaebols (Samsung, SK, Hyundai, and LG) was 41 per cent of the South Korean GDP, and the top 30 chaebol were 78 per cent of GDP.

Technology is Africa’s great equaliser—if we master it strategically. He said this can only happen when nations invest in infrastructure, nurture their own “National Firms” while attracting FDIs and once they have acquired sufficient technological capacities, invest in applied research that solves national challenges, deepen digital infrastructure, and industrial clusters that connect companies s with investors.
He added, “equally crucial is rethinking intellectual property regimes to encourage African-created technologies while still drawing on global knowledge. The strategic opportunity that Africa missed is to rely almost exclusively on foreign multinationals. This dependency inadvertently supplanted national firms, and the “Technological Learning” process was lost. This is why today, roads, bridges and basic engineering projects are contracted to foreign firms.”

On how Africa can foster a culture of innovation to drive sustainable economic growth, he noted: “Innovation thrives where curiosity meets support. We must democratise research, making it relevant to real social and industrial challenges and this where we need strong involvement of local firms. Universities should become laboratories for problem-solving, not just degree factories. Governments, in turn, must de-risk experimentation through innovation funds, startup grants, and public-private partnerships.”

Speaking on policies that are needed to support the development of technology hubs and innovation ecosystems across the continent, he advised African governments to focus on four enablers. “Affordable and reliable electricity, broadband connectivity, coordinated research funding, commercialisation programmes and urban innovation clusters co-located with universities and manufacturing zones.
He said policies must shift from rhetoric to predictable funding mechanisms, so, “hubs don’t vanish when donor projects end.”

He remarked By modernising rather than abandoning traditional sectors. Agriculture, for instance, can absorb digital technologies—drones, analytics, and agro-processing—to create new value chains. The Fourth Industrial Revolution does not replace the old economy; it reprograms it.

On the specific initiatives or projects that he is most proud of in your as Senior Special Adviser on Industrialisation at the AfDB, he said two initiatives stand out: “The Industrialise Africa Strategy, which mobilised billions in co-financing for manufacturing zones and infrastructure; and the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones, which blend agriculture with modern industry. Seeing these projects transform communities gives me quiet satisfaction.”

 How does the Advisory Council on Industrialization of the AfCFTA envision bridging the gap between policy and implementation?

We emphasize coherence and accountability. Every recommendation must be accompanied by measurable targets, implementation champions, and timelines. We’re also building cross-country learning networks to help nations adapt best practices, not reinvent the wheel.
He sees the future of African industrialisation as hybrid. His words: “The future will be hybrid—a fusion of digital and physical production. Africa’s competitive strength will lie in agribusiness and resource-based industrialisation, powered by green technology, regional integration, and digital platforms. Innovation will define who moves from consumer to creator. We need to reflect on our past and how we ended up a failed industrial state.

A future shaped by Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to make industrial catching up very difficult. For example, Nigeria’s early post-independence blueprints for industrialisation were, on paper, not dissimilar in ambition from those of East Asia. Yet we must confront the stark lesson: a vision without the requisite, sustained leadership action is merely a daydream. While Development Plans were articulated, the nation lacked continuity, political will, and, crucially, the transformational leadership to see them through. Policies were crafted, investments were voted, and human capital was, at times, developed—only to be dissipated by short-term political calculus, mismanagement, and a recurring cycle of institutional amnesia. This has led us to our present crossroads: a moment of reckoning laid bare by every major development indicator.”

What books, mentors, or philosophies have most influenced your thinking and approach to your work?

“Books by Joseph Schumpeter, Albert Hirschman, Chris Freeman, Dr. Pius Okigbo, a great Nigerian economist shaped my understanding of innovation and development while John Kenneth Galbraith influenced my attitude as a public intellectual. and . My lecturers and supervisors at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex and Prof. Adedotun Philips, NISER, Ibadan taught me to think critically but act pragmatically. Philosophically, I’m guided by the idea that nations fail or succeed not because of resources, but because of choices, and leadership,” he admitted.

How do you envision spending your post-professional life, and what projects or passions will you pursue next?

He draws a long laugh and breathes out heavily, in manner that appears conspiratorial. “I intend to devote more time to mentorship, public advocacy and writing—perhaps establishing a Pan-African Center for Innovation Policy, Industrialisation, Technological Change and Development. I also plan to document Africa’s overlooked industrial experiments—less as nostalgia, more as instruction. And of course, I hope to spend more time with family, reminding myself that legacy lives not only in institutions, but in people.”