Good Governance, Sustainable Infrastructure and Industrialisation in Africa: The Issues, Prospects and Challenges in Nigeria

Literature has it that industrialisation portends development for citizens and for a nation. The paper as such investigates if ‘the people’ eventually develop given the anti-people policies and programmes drawn by political leadership and their foreign collaborators. It finds out that foreign direct investment in Africa focuses on extraction of natural resources and not particularly for industrialisation of host nations. In the course of the operations of multinational corporations, they violate environmental peace and livelihood of indigenous populations, without getting justice before domestic courts and international arbitration tribunals. Host nations hesitate to enforce decisions that are against foreign investors on account of certain terms in bilateral investment treaties. The colonial design for modern Africa is technology transfer, to which states in Africa groan under the burden of foreign loans, incurred to procure infrastructure and foreign technology. Is the political leadership able to champion the course of responsible production and consumption when it is most times motivated by greed and selfishness, which hinder acquisition and maintenance of infrastructure and industrialisation? Nonetheless, focus is on the prospect of education, which is capable of boosting indigenous engineers’ skills acquisition, innovative design thinking, towards having low-cost manufacturing capabilities. The paper enquires if the theoretical based education, bequeathed can work for Africa. It adopts doctrinal research methodology with historical and analytical perspectives as it recommends innovative indigenous technology as the right path for Africa to industrialize.