Nigeria has a very large research system, with nearly 200 universities that employed more than 60,000 academic staff at the end of 2019. The country is also one of Africa’s largest producers of scientific research across all disciplines, surpassed only by South Africa and Egypt. In the social sciences, in particular, Nigeria is Africa’s second-largest producer of published research, after South Africa. However, the country’s social science research (SSR) production does not match the size of its SSR system. Using mixed methods, we come up with two important reasons for this: (i) research inputs are low, mainly because research is poorly funded and researchers devote too little time to research as a result of poor organisational climate, and (ii) the research support system is weak. No single institution currently has a clear mandate to centrally coordinate SSR in Nigeria. Consequently, research efforts are often duplicated and the limited research resources are spread too thin. Moreover, logistical support for research is missing or inefficient in most organisations. Therefore, improving research productivity in the country would require much stronger research coordination and wide-ranging improvements in the research climate.

Theoretically, human capital is conclusively believed to be positively related with economic growth. While empirically, the said relationship does not always hold for several reasons. Thus, the current paper presents new results on a set of conditions under which human capital is robustly and positively associated with economic growth. Using data for 132 countries over 15 years, the empirical results reveal that human capital plays a positive role in per capita GDP growth only in the presence of better economic opportunities and high-quality legal institutions. In fact, economic opportunities reinforce the effect of human capital on growth: the easier it is to do business and trade domestically or internationally, the stronger the effect of human capital on growth. In conclusion, the findings suggest that inconclusive results in previous empirical studies on human capital and growth might be due to omitted variable bias as these studies do not include variables related to social capabilities.

ChatGPT, a state-of-the-art chatbot built upon Open AI's generative pre-trained transformer, has generated a major public interest and caused quite a stir in the higher education sector, where reactions have ranged from excitement to consternation. This paper therefore examines the potential impact of ChatGPT on learning and assessment, using the example of academic essays, being a major form of assessment with widespread applications of ChatGPT. This provides an opportunity to unpack broader insights on the challenge of generative AI's to the relevance, quality and credibility of higher education learning in a rapidly changing 21st century knowledge economy. We conducted a quasi-experiment in which we deployed ChatGPT to generate academic essays in response to a typical assessment brief, and then subjected the essays to plagiarism checks and independent grading. The results indicate that ChatGPT is able to generate highly original, and high quality, contents from distinct individual accounts in response to the same assessment brief. However, it is unable to generate multiple original contents from the same account, and it struggled with referencing. The discussion highlights the need for higher education providers to rethink their approach to assessment, in response to disruption precipitated by artificial intelligence. Thus, following the discussion of empirical data, we propose a new conceptual framework for AI-assisted assessment for lifelong learning, in which the parameters of assessment extend beyond knowledge (know what) testing, to competence (know how) assessment and performance (show how) evaluation.

(2016). Firm-level innovation in Africa: overcoming limits and constraints. Innovation and Development: Vol. 6, Firm-level Innovation in Africa: Overcoming Limits and Constraints, pp. 161-174.