The Bank of Industry (BOI) has called for a rethink of how capital is mobilised and deployed to accelerate Nigeria’s inclusive economic and industrial transformation.
The Managing Director of BOI, Dr Olasupo Olusi, made the call on Tuesday in Abuja at the bank’s 2026 Annual Public Lecture, themed “Rethinking Capital for Inclusive Economic Transformation”.
Olusi said Nigeria needed long-term capital capable of supporting industrial growth, reaching underserved businesses and attracting private investment into productive sectors of the economy.
He said the theme was apt as it focused on how capital could be mobilised, structured and deployed more effectively to deliver measurable development outcomes.
According to him, the annual lecture, which began in 2024, was established as a platform for informed discussions on issues shaping Nigeria’s economic and industrial development.
He recalled that the maiden edition examined how support and financing for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) could address poverty and food insecurity, while the 2025 edition focused on development finance imperatives for Nigeria’s growth.
Olusi said the third edition would build on previous discussions by examining how development finance could be leveraged to unlock greater private-sector investment.
He disclosed that BOI disbursed N645 billion in 2025, supporting more than 12,000 businesses and impacting 1.68 million jobs, but noted that the scale of opportunities ahead remained significant.
“Achieving inclusive transformation will require mobilising more long-term capital, extending financing to underserved sectors and ensuring that financing translates into economic impact,” he said.
Olusi commended the guest lecturer, Dr Asad Alam, a former World Bank Director and Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, for accepting the bank’s invitation to share his insights.
He also thanked the Federal Government, state governments, development partners and the private sector for their continued support for BOI’s mandate of driving sustainable and inclusive industrial development.
The guest lecturer, in his paper titled “Rethinking Capital for Inclusive Economic Transformation – Some Reflections”, said Nigeria must move beyond capital accumulation to focus on efficiency, productivity and human capital to achieve inclusive transformation.
Alam said the lecture was framed around three questions: the importance of capital to economic growth; what global evidence showed about the role of capital and other factors; and how countries could maximise the impact of capital for inclusive transformation.
He noted that while capital remained important, the efficiency of capital deployment was what ultimately determined its impact on growth.
According to him, as economies mature, Total Factor Productivity (TFP) becomes increasingly important as a driver of sustained economic growth.
“Global evidence shows that as countries grow, TFP becomes more important than physical capital, while human capital contribution remains modest but holds huge potential given existing gaps with high-income countries,” he said.
Alam also said greater equity could support potential growth, noting that higher inequality was associated with lower physical and human capital accumulation and lower productivity.
He stressed that investments in technology and climate action had the potential to spur productivity and structural transformation if capital was deployed efficiently and supported by strong institutions and inclusive policies.
Alam said the debate on economic growth had moved beyond the simplistic notion that poor countries only needed more capital, a thinking that dominated development economics in the 1940s.
He explained that early models, such as the Harrod-Domar model, assumed that countries were poor because they lacked capital and that the solution was to channel capital to them through multilateral development institutions.
“But that did not do the trick,” he said, noting that the failure of capital alone to deliver sustained growth forced economists, including Nobel laureates, to rethink conventional growth models.
He explained that the Solow growth model of the 1950s introduced technology, innovation and ideas as critical drivers of growth beyond physical capital and labour.
According to him, the 1980s and 1990s marked a shift away from central planning and sectoral interventions towards market efficiency, addressing distortions and allowing creative destruction to drive productivity.
He said subsequent decades brought new perspectives on human capital, institutions, inequality, technology and climate change as fundamental determinants of long-term growth.
Alam said inclusive economic transformation should be understood as a development process that benefits the majority of the population, rather than an elite group with political connections or concentrated economic power.
He noted that Nigeria had been on the path of economic transformation since independence, but that the degree of success and whether growth had been widely shared remained subjects of debate.
On efficiency, Alam said practitioners in finance understood that the efficiency of capital deployment determined its impact on growth, employment and broader development outcomes.
He described TFP as the efficiency with which all inputs — capital, labour, land and natural capital — are combined to produce output, stressing its growing importance in modern economies.
Alam said human capital remained central to economic development, adding that individuals in positions of responsibility had benefited from investments in education and skills and that such investments must be scaled across the population.
He warned that inequality had become a defining global challenge, both across and within countries, and could undermine economic growth if left unaddressed.
Alam added that technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI), and climate action were now central to discussions on economic growth and had the potential to transform economies, but their impact would depend on supportive policies and institutions.
The Special Adviser to the President on Economic Affairs, Dr Tope Fasua, challenged economists in Nigeria and Africa to go beyond the classical factors of production and identify the key elements within TFP that could drive growth on the continent.
Fasua said the time had come for Africa, particularly Nigeria, to further disaggregate TFP and recognise technology, information, knowledge and AI as distinct factors of production.
According to him, while Alam spoke about human capital as Nigeria’s asset, given the country’s average age of 16.9 years, Nigeria must develop its own approach to measuring human capital rather than waiting for international standards.
Fasua said he disagreed with the view that the role of capital was becoming less important, arguing that challenges relating to power, logistics and infrastructure all required financing.
He added that capital should not be viewed narrowly as money alone, as information, knowledge and other intangible assets could also constitute forms of capital.
The lecture featured a panel session moderated by Ms Nancy Illoh-Nnaji, with panellists including Mr Adeyemi Folorunsho, Director, Abuja Zonal Office of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, and Mr Daniel Mueller, Executive Director of InfraCredit.
Other panellists were Dr Osasuyi Dirisu, Executive Director, Policy Innovation Centre, and Mr Titus Owoeye, who represented Mr Omoboyede Olusanya, Group Managing Director of Flour Mills Nigeria.
The panel commended BOI for supporting economic growth through the disbursement of facilities to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and financing the industrial sector.
They also called for increased funding for the bank to enable it to expand its capacity and meet its development-finance obligations.
