The Vice-Chancellor Caleb University, Prof. Olalekan Asikhia, has identified economic inequality, discrimination, lack of jobs, and poor infrastructure, as well as its impact on business operations, as part of the challenges Africa faces in its quest to move out of poverty.
The professor of strategy and entrepreneurship disclosed that for African nations to eliminate poverty, small and medium-scale enterprises must be prioritised to create job opportunities and stimulate economic growth, as well as provide access to loan facilities for businesses to thrive.
Prof. Asikhia was speaking at Babcock University’s 57th inaugural lecture, tagged, “It’s time to use functional businesses to kill poverty in Africa.”
He stated that despite the proliferation of several intervention programmes and policy frameworks, poverty rates have continued to rise, with a persistent disconnect between policy interventions and actual outcomes.
He added that the failure of poverty alleviation efforts in Nigeria can be attributed to a wide range of systemic challenges, noting that corruption remains a central obstacle, as public officials often divert resources meant for the poor, thereby turning poverty reduction initiatives into opportunities for personal enrichment.
“Nigeria has implemented over forty poverty alleviation programmes since independence, targeting various dimensions of deprivation through several initiatives which include Operation Feed the Nation, the National Directorate of Employment, as well as the Better Life Programme, among others.”
He explained that performance evaluation of a functional business should be centred on social and communal outcomes, such as well-being, sustainable development, and community prosperity, stressing the importance of functional business embedding itself within communities, aligning economic objectives with social improvement, and leveraging partnerships to address complex societal challenges.
The Caleb VC further maintains that for universities to contribute meaningfully to wealth creation, they must move beyond traditional teaching and research roles to actively foster entrepreneurship, innovation, and commercialisation of research output, saying this requires integrating entrepreneurial education, applied research, and industry linkages into the core mission of higher education institutions to transform into creative hubs that drive regional and national economic growth.
He emphasised that there is a need to integrate entrepreneurship into all institutions’ curricula, with emphasis on practical orientation, so that students can cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset and launch ventures during their academic careers.
Prof. Asikhia further advocated for equal distribution of wealth in the country to foster economic development and peaceful coexistence among citizens.
