Adedayo Olofinyehun

2 Publications in AERD

Author Publications

Built to last? The long-term impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial attitude

By Abiodun Egbetokun

A high rate of youth unemployment is one of the toughest problems facing African countries and which threatens the attainment of the sustainable development goals. Entrepreneurship education interventions are thought to be helpful in creating entrepreneurs whose activity will ultimately help to reduce the burden of youth unemployment. However, do such interventions work consistently in the long term? Drawing upon the theory of planned behaviour and a new typology of impacts, we tackle this question in the context of a long-standing entrepreneurship education intervention in Nigeria. We use pooled cross-sectional data from a sample of over 12,000 Nigerian undergraduates and apply an instrumental variable approach in a difference-in-differences (DiD) regression framework to obtain intention-to-treat estimates, thereby avoiding overoptimistic estimates of impact. The results show that despite a strong positive instantaneous impact, the longer the policy has been in place, the weaker its effect. In real life, it means that the policy is unable to continue to generate the desired impact of increased interest in entrepreneurship among repeated student cohorts, all else being equal. We suggest ways to overcome the inconsistency of impact and drive long-term social change; these include differentiating entrepreneurship curriculum to match students’ pre-course profiles. Overall, our study provides the first long-term impact evaluation of an entrepreneurship education intervention in a developing country context. Thus, we advance the policy debate on how to design and implement effective entrepreneurship education interventions that can foster youth entrepreneurship and employment. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024.

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The production of social science research in Nigeria: status and systemic determinants

By Abiodun Egbetokun

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. © 2022, The Author(s).

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