Expert backs Fayemi on knowledge economy

An expert in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Mr. Michael Ale Monday said the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic has justified the policy of knowledge economy initiated by Ekiti state governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi.

He said the emergence of the pandemic has made the latest innovations of robots and artificial intelligence inevitable products for all nations.

Ale recommended an urgent and robust boost in industrialisation for Nigerian’s recovery and precautionary step against possible economic recession.

Ale, who is the national president of Association of Waterwell Drilling Rig Owners and Practitioners (AWDROP) in Nigeria, in a release made available to newsmen in Ado-Ekiti said:

 “It is not about government policy, it is all about understanding what industrialisation is.

“If we say it is government policy, we are looking in depth into aspects of leadership. But if we look into a global perspective as far as the United Nations and the world are concerned, there is a global policy and a national policy.”

He listed stages of global policy for industrialisation that can be of help to the government. According to the first industrial revolution was when machinery replaced hands in agriculture, the second was the internet and technology, the third was renewable energy which made activities faster and the fourth revolution was robots and artificial intelligence.

He said Nigeria is still at the first industrial revolution stage he said:

“What really affected our industrialisation was the economy that has to do with oil and gas in the second industrial revolution.”

“With that, it gave us concentration on economy when it comes to the cash stage, we forgot about going to the farm, we forgot about the fact that we used to have cotton in the north, cocoa in the south and then the oil came.”

Ale is of the view that COVID-19 is the beginning of another revolution in industrialisation in the fourth category. He stated that  when  we still talk about chips, robots, and the likes, we are still going to import and this is why the issue of knowledge comes in.

“How many of our universities have research outcomes to use? All these developed countries go to their universities; their businessmen can go to the universities and engage them in researches that would help their development,” he said.

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