Entrepreneurs and innovators are scattered across the globe with their existence preceding formal education in the history of mankind. We can as well say, they are the very beginning of civilization in the earliest days, when trade by barter was used for business transaction and intuition coupled with trial by error were used for discoveries, which were continually built-on till the age of industrial revolution when several human labor was replaced by machines facilitating accuracy, speed, and ease. Being a business of risk and chances, for an innovation to be significantly recognized, there must be a preconceived problem it is solving and must be marketable. Entrepreneurship and innovation can never be overrated as it cut across every field ever known i.e. medicine, education, agriculture, science, mining, marine, engineering, to mention but a few. Like farmers yearn for fertile soil to till, scientists, crave for a laboratory to experiment, and sailors need the sea to function, entrepreneurs and innovators need an enabling environment.
Tony Elumelu said that, “the biggest form of freedom and independence for future leaders was to create an environment that enables ideas to thrive and succeed among youths”. Researches and experimentation must be encouraged in our universities. It is a national insult for the education system to continually produce a consuming generation that is only sound theoretically with no practical experience on what they claim to be a professional on. A fraction of Africans whom are opportune to study abroad where there are adequate supporting technology with an enabling environment to explore and experiment their intuitive ideas are proofs to acknowledge that, the persistent failure in Africa is not about the people but the environment.
Meanwhile, hundreds of African scholars, innovators, and entrepreneurs scattered across the globe are patriotic enough to influence a positive change but until we are able to create an enabling and supporting environment, it remains a fantasy.
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