How Human Capital, Infrastructure And Technology Propel Economic Prosperity, As Different From GDP Growth
The Oasis Reporters
January 10, 2020
When the ‘father’ of Gross Domestic Product, GDP based econometrics, Simon Smith Kuznets warned in the 30’s about using GDP figures to assess a people’s level of well being, it became necessary that a differentiation should be made between Economic Prosperity and Economic Growth.
While at the sidelines of the 2019 Annual conference of the Nigerian Society of Economists which held in Abuja, Nigeria, The Oasis Reporters cornered some economists to throw a little light on the apparent differential between prosperity and growth:
“Three factors determine economic prosperity, as different from economic growth, we learnt.
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1. Human Capital (interplay between education and skills).
2. Physical Capital (infrastructure)
3. Technology”.
Ruminating further on it, it is obvious that a country can obtain a high GDP growth rate, yet have a majority of it’s citizens mired in unmitigated poverty with the concomitant feeling of disconnect from the growth figures the country may possess.
However, it may conversely be viewed that private citizens can achieve individual or personal prosperity by exercising within the interplay of the three factors stated above.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government has promised to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by providing an enabling environment for small businesses to thrive. The Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed Shamsuna, stated this in an interview with Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, which was quoted and published on the ministry’s twitter handle, Monday morning.
The tweet said: “President Muhammadu Buhari has directed that we must pull 100m Nigerians out of poverty and that is our major focus”.
Perhaps the first step towards pulling Nigerians out of poverty may start with the revamp of the educational sector, infrastructural makeover, especially the fixing of Nigeria’s gross energy deficit, having a good road network and other basic infrastructures. Then the march out of poverty can begin in earnest.
Written by Greg Abolo.
