West Africa: Development of Scientific and Technical Education and Challenges of Introducing New Technologies (on the Examples of Nigeria and Ghana)

Nigeria and Ghana, some of the largest countries in Africa in terms of population and GDP, possess considerable scientific and technological potential, which, due to many objective and subjective reasons, has not been fully realized. Yet these West African states have enormous human and natural resources and occupy an important place in the system of international trade and economic relations, not only as major oil exporters, but also due to a fairly high (by African standards) level of industrial development. After the Russia-Africa summit, which was held in Sochi in October 2019, the process of expanding economic contacts with African countries has intensified, and Nigeria and Ghana are becoming important partners of the Russian Federation. In this connection, an adequate assessment of the scientific and technical level of West African labor force and specialists able to utilize foreign know-how and develop own technical solutions adapted to African realities is of particular relevance.

The purpose of the present paper is to identify the degree of adaptation of the educational systems of Nigeria and Ghana to the needs of these countries in providing industry, the ICT sector, and scientific institutions with qualified personnel, as well as the level and nature of the application of modern technologies. To achieve this the authors employed the historical-systemic and comparative methods of analysis. In the paper it has been argued that the lack of funding and the lack of qualified personnel, i.e. the problems that the Nigerian and Ghanaian education systems have not yet dealt with, remain serious obstacles to the large-scale introduction of modern technologies. At the same time, autonomous specialized institutes that are not associated with educational institutions and which conduct research in specific sectors of the economy (e.g. fishing, energy, construction, banking, medicine) are better integrated with producers and thus generate most practical results.

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