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“Africa’s industrial transformation will not be driven by imported solutions alone – it will be powered by researchers/scientists trained to solve local challenges.” For Prof Adewale Dosunmu, a Nigerian Petroleum Engineer and mentor with more than three decades of experience, this is not just a vision for the future—it is a necessity for the continent’s sustainable development.  He has also been in academia for more than 30 years and has supervised several graduate students at the master’s and doctoral levels.

In an interview with the Partnership for Skills in Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology-Regional Scholarship and Innovation Fund (PASET-Rsif), Prof Dosunmu reflects on the role of graduate education in building Africa’s scientific and technological capacity, the importance of industry-relevant research, and how programmes such as PASET-Rsif managed by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) are nurturing a new generation of scientists equipped to develop homegrown solutions to Africa’s most pressing challenges.

From advancing innovation to strengthening local expertise, he shares why investing in research talent today is key to shaping Africa’s industrial future.

Q: Can you share an example of how investing in advanced skills—such as technical training, research capacity, or innovation—has directly improved productivity, reduced costs, or enabled your company to develop new products or services?

A: You know the petroleum industry is a high technology industry exploiting fossil fuel, which is essential for a wide range of activities globally. It is a major determinant in the global economy as it drives transportation and energy, which are crucial to international economic development. Graduate students in African universities must be encouraged to undertake research relevant to solving problems in the oil and gas industry. The undergraduates, most of the time, don’t have sufficient capacity in terms of the technical requirements, the quantum of academic work required to be able to handle graduate work at that level. So, MSc and PhD students are best equipped to undertake advanced work, particularly based on their thesis and dissertations, which if properly handled, can contribute to the knowledge gap in the industry at the local and international levels. Our graduate research must be aimed at solving social and industry problems that add value to society rather than ending up on research shelves.

The industry should be encouraged to collaborate with the universities so that the outcomes of the research work coming out of the universities will have a direct impact on their operations.  Professors and their students are best suited to work on problems of the industry because they have a good understanding of local problems, and with the correct approach, they can drive research that aids the development of the continent.

Collaboration between the industry, the universities and the government is essential, where students can earn their degrees, and also contribute to the development of the industry and the economic transformation in their own countries as well as the continent. We see this model in different parts of the world, such as the US, UK, Canada and some other countries in the West. In fact, in some countries,  graduate students don’t pay fees as they are funded by grants provided for industry-relevant research. Professors obtain grants and based on the grants, graduate students work on projects defined by industry or the government.  At the conclusion of the research, the industry takes the results for deployment in their operations, while the student gets the credit for their master’s or doctoral thesis. So, I think this model is very important as it provides excellent collaboration between industry and academia. On a personal level, I participated in this kind of collaboration. For about 8 years, I  occupied a Professorial chair at the University of Port Harcourt, the Shell Professorial Chair. This appointment allowed me to collaborate with the industry and to understand what their problems were. And these problems fell in line with my own research areas of interest. Before this appointment, I was a Distinguished Lecturer of the Society of Petroleum Engineers International. I travelled to different parts of the world discussing aspects of wellbore stability, geomechanics, and solving drilling and well engineering problems.  In the oil industry, drilling oil and gas wells is a major investment in terms of the expenditure made by the company. It is through the well that we can produce oil and gas. So with this opportunity for collaboration, I was able to understand what their problems were and working with my master’s and doctoral students, we were able to offer solutions. And some of those solutions are still in use as of today. The company found the result to be very beneficial in terms of cost reduction and efficiency in their operations. Secondly, we were able to address field problems at the local level and provide solutions to their local and global problems.  And quite a few of the students, of course, who worked with me are now employed by the companies in the oil industry in Nigeria and abroad. Since the petroleum sector is a global industry, I now work with several operating companies in different parts of Nigeria, Europe and the US.

Q: If you were advising governments and development partners like the World Bank, what would you say is the economic cost of underinvesting in higher education and advanced skills—and what impact could stronger investment have on job creation and Africa’s industrial and economic transformation?

A:
Well, underinvestment means that we are not taking advantage of the very bright students that we have, and that means we’ll continue to import technology from outside Africa, because we have a lot of very bright students who, if properly guided and motivated can do very useful work. So we would fail if we do not collaborate and invest in them as a government and as an industry. Investing in PhD education would help us solve our problems without necessarily importing some of these solutions that we’re looking for. In my own case, we found that the solutions that were proposed initially for some of the problems of the industry were solutions that were derived in other geological environments, which did not have the same kind of geological setting as we have in Africa.

Q: What role do universities and PhD-level research play in solving real industry problems in your sector, and how could stronger partnerships between higher education and industry accelerate innovation, strengthen local value chains, and reduce reliance on imported expertise?

A: In terms of employment, the good thing is that once these students are properly trained, the industry will be willing to employ them, because the industry is looking for bright people. In fact, part of the complaint of the industry is that when these students come on board, for the first one or two years, they are training them. But if the students have been part of a process that provides solutions to the problems that industry has, then, as soon as he/she graduates, he gets into industry and hit the ground running. Even the industry will come looking for these graduates to solve their problems with a view to making profit. Once we can show them that this can be done, certainly it creates opportunities for our young graduates, which translates to self-reliance and better economic productivity while reducing dependence on foreign labour and technology.