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This paper investigates whether institutional environment influences the relationship government spending and economic growth in ECOWAS over the period 2008–2017.

The study adopts the recently developed panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) by Abrigo and Love (2015) and a two-step system generalised method of moment (GMM).

The results from the study show no evidence of either unidirectional or bidirectional causal relationship between government spending and economic growth in ECOWAS. Our findings reveal that government spending when associated with high level of corruption, oversized government and a waste of public resources will not cause economic growth.

Unlike previous studies, we resolve the inherent problems of endogeneity and persistence in economic data. Likewise, we depart from existing studies that examined the causal relationship in a bivariate framework and adopt a trivariate causality testing.

Nigeria’s quest to industrialize has received major attention in recent times. Special economic zones (SEZs) are thus recognized as capable of providing opportunities for firms to improve innovation capability and export performance. Limited empirical evidence exists on their economic impacts, particularly in terms of promoting innovation and exporting. This makes it difficult to provide accurate impact estimates or identify the channels through which the SEZ affects firm behavior. This study aims to specifically establish the Nigerian pattern of firm behavior in SEZs to improve the understanding of African SEZs and the appropriate incentives that can foster industrialization.

The study used primary data from a survey of firms in Nigeria’s active SEZs and in-depth interviews of major stakeholders. The primary data was collected through a semi-structured questionnaire administered to firms within the selected SEZs and an in-depth interview guide. The sampled SEZs were in Lagos, Ogun, Kano and Cross River States. In-depth interviews were conducted with the zone management, Nigerian Export Processing Zones Authority officials and the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, content analyses of policy documents, principal component analysis, logit regression and two-stage least squares regression.

The results suggest that the number of incentives offered to SEZ firms does not matter for improved firm performance in terms of innovation and exports. Firms’ export performance is poor because firms do not comply with the basic tenet of SEZ as an area dedicated to free trade and consequent mandatory export of manufactures and services from the free trade enclave. Although firms in the Nigerian SEZs are considered to be fairly innovative, it is important to note that there is no evidence of innovation that is new to the world among these firms.

The research team could not visit the zones in the Northeast region of the country due to insecurity. Some of the zones had also become inactive at the time of the survey, and the response rate from firms was very low. This limited the number of sampled firms.

The findings imply that the NEPZA Act needs to be revised to reflect the contextual realities of SEZs in Nigeria. The policies and details of each incentive offered by the government should be made clear to investors. For example, the permission given for SEZ firms to sell 100% of their manufactured, assembled or imported goods into the domestic market should be revisited as it obviously affects innovation and exports negatively. This would tremendously help SEZ firms fulfill their mandate of promoting exports, improving FDI attraction, enhancing industrialization and promoting economic competitiveness.

Previous studies have either focused on how SEZs affect innovation or influence export performance without accounting for the role of incentives in shaping innovation and export performance. This study fills this knowledge gap by providing evidence on the type of incentives for firms in Nigeria’s SEZs, investigating their effects (or otherwise) on innovation activities at the firm level and ascertaining how improvement in innovation capacity arising from the incentives affects firms’ export performance.

The challenges confronting the Nigerian construction industry which led to the adoption of supply chain management (SCM) practice were evaluated in this chapter. It was discovered that the Nigerian construction industry is confronted with fragmentation and poor information management. The stakeholders within the Nigerian construction industry proposed the adoption of SCM to overcome the fragmentation and other shenanigans facing the industry. This chapter revealed that construction supply chain (CSC) practices within the Nigerian construction industry focus on waste elimination by adopting the lean concept. The focus on the lean concept could be attributed to the numerous research related to lean or the enormous waste emanating from the Nigerian construction industry. Regardless of the emphasis on lean, the Nigerian CSC is still confronted with fragmentation and heavy waste generation. Thus, this chapter proposed the adoption of principles and technologies driven by the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) is a paradigm shift for the management of CSC in the country. It was discovered in this chapter that Nigerian construction supply stakeholders had not embraced the technologies and principles of the 4IR. The failure to adopt the technologies driven by the 4IR is attributed to the absence of a CSC model that depicts the management of CSC in alignment with the 4IR. This chapter called for developing a SCM model for the Nigerian construction industry in tandem with the principles and technologies of the 4IR.

Reports a study to determine the suitability of beniseed for bread making as well as the chemical composition and acceptability of the bread among Nigerian bread consuming population. Three bread samples were developed from wheat, beniseed, and cassava composite flour using the formulae 85:10:5, 80:15:5 and 75:25:5. Baking characteristics, chemical composition and acceptability tests were carried out on the samples with wheat bread serving as control. Results show that bread produced from beniseed composite flour has similar baking characteristics in terms of appearance, colour and flavour when compared with wheat bread. Consumer acceptability tests indicated that the bread samples were all acceptable, with the sample with formula 85:10:5 ranked first and being the most preferred. Analysis of chemical composition indicated that the bread samples contain higher protein, fat, crude fibre and ash. This study has shown that acceptable bread of higher nutritional value can be produced from beniseed.

This paper aims to discuss the existing literature on critical success factors (CSFs) for maintenance implementation in Nigerian universities and compile them in a single format to determine if gaps may exist.

Many relevant articles were searched using keywords extracted from a preliminary literature review. The second round of articles abstract study resulted in 40 articles been selected for this compilation. Inductive coding technique and content analysis methodology were used to identify the constructs of the CSFs. Subsequently, a critical analysis of the reviewed literature identified some gaps in the literature studied.

This literature review reveals that lack of maintenance policy, maintenance culture, shortage of building facilities and overpopulation in Nigerian universities are the major problems affecting maintenance implementation success. Additionally, most researchers concentrate on the identification of CSFs without providing the strategies for implementing them.

More in-depth research must be carried out on the study of CSFs to implement maintenance policy and culture in Nigerian universities. Duplication in the frequency analysis of the success factors is a significant limitation in this research work and is attributed to the secondary search used as the primary methodology for many articles cited.

This paper provides an in-depth compilation and analysis of all previously identified success factors for maintenance implementation in Nigerian universities using a structured methodological approach.

Research reveals that the built environment graduates are not matching the needs of the 21st century construction industry. Evidence shows that the built environment academics (BEA) struggle to reskill and upskill to meet the industry's demand. Studies about Nigeria's BEA's perceived barriers in meeting the 21st-century industry demands are scarce. Thus, the paper investigated the perceived barriers and measures to improve BEA in Nigeria's 21st-century world of teaching. The outcome intends to enhance teaching practices and increase employability in the built environment disciplines.

Data were sourced from elite virtual interviews across Nigeria. The participants were well informed about Nigeria's built environment education and the possible barriers hindering 21st-century teaching from improving employable graduates in the built environment professionals (BEP). The researchers adopted a thematic analysis for the collected data and supplemented the data with secondary sources.

The study shows that BEA needs to improve BEA's teaching mechanism. Improving BEA will enable the built environment graduates to meet the minimum standards expected by the 21st-century industry. Findings categorised the perceived 22 barriers facing BEA into internal stakeholders-related barriers, external stakeholders-related barriers, and common barriers. Also, findings proffered practicable measures to improve BEA in the workplace via improved industry collaboration and technological advancement.

The research is restricted to the perceived barriers and measures to improve BEA in 21st-century teaching in Nigeria via a qualitative research design. Future research should validate the results and test the paper's proposed framework.

The paper confirms that the BEA requires stakeholder collaboration and technological advancement measures to improve teaching in the 21st century, leading to enhanced employability graduates. The paper would stir major stakeholders, especially BEA, and advance the quality of employable graduates in the Nigerian built environment professions.

The thematic network and proposed framework could be employed to stimulate Nigeria's BEA for better service delivery. This intends to create an enabling environment that will enhance stakeholders' collaboration and technological advancement for the BEA to produce better employable graduates in the 21st century.

The acknowledged mode of securing work by contractors is through the bidding process. However, the bidding decisions undertaken by some indigenous contractors in developing countries are fraught with challenges that often engender bidding practices (such as collusion through price fixing and intentional lower bidding) and threaten business survival. Therefore, in the quest to better understand these challenges and viable advocate solutions for overcoming them, this paper aims to identify the key challenges impacting the bid decision process by small indigenous building contractors in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and establish the strength of their relationship between the pairs of key challenges.

A comprehensive literature review was conducted to identify nine challenges impacting the bid decision of indigenous building contractors in Tanzania, which were used to design a questionnaire survey. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics, mean score, inferential statistics (One sample t-tests), Kendall’s concordance and correlation analysis.

Challenges identified from a literature review were empirically tested using survey responses accrued from 33 participating small indigenous building contractors in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The findings illustrate that lack of liquidity, profit returns, lack of equipment, lack of experience of several works and procurement procedures are perceived as being the five most critical challenges. Project location, site accessibility and lack of labour were least critical. The major finding from the correlation analysis was the existence of the strong and positive correlation between “project location” and “site accessibility”.

The study is limited by its sample and geographical settings which focussed and confined the results on one country, Tanzania. However, the findings can be considered as important for other developing countries wishing to gain insights into the challenges impacting bid decisions.

Measures for addressing the identified challenges impacting the bidding decisions of the indigenous small building contractors would be undertaken. The findings will enable contractors to not only reconcile the challenges with the industry and in so doing benefit both themselves and the clients but also enable them to be better prepared to deliver contractual obligations and generate socio-economic wealth. Government and policymakers will also be able to appropriately develop macro interventions for managing these challenges, which could be custom-tailored to indigenous small contractors. Finally, improving the ability of local firms to compete in the construction industry has been recognised as having the potential of advancing socio-economic development within the comity of developing countries.

The study enhances government, client and practitioners’ understanding of the challenges affecting the bidding practices among the indigenous building contractors in Tanzania. This area of investigation has previously been under explored particularly sub-Saharan Africa.

This study aims to investigate and ranks the critical factors influencing the bid or no-bid decision and their importance for the indigenous small building contractors within the Tanzanian construction industry.

An interpretivist epistemological design was adopted to extensively manually review and search extant literature on bid or no-bid decision-making criteria. A total of 30 most common bid or no-bid decision-making criteria were identified. These were included in a questionnaire survey data collection instrument. The survey was distributed to 40 small indigenous (local) building contractors in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In total, 33 responses were received. Response data was subjected to both descriptive and inferential statistics.

The results show a disparity of ranking of the 30 bid/no-bid criteria factors among the two grades of small contractors, with 11 factors having statistically significant differences (p = < 0.05). Based on the overall sample, the most highly ranked seven factors in ascending order were: availability of capital; financial capacity of the client; project size; profitability; project type; need of work; and current workload. The following were the least ranked: tax liability; the degree of safety; availability of other projects; availability of labor; bidding document price; and uncertainty because of weather conditions. Availability of capital and financial capacity of the client were jointly ranked as the most important by Class VI contractors. In comparison, availability of capital and need of study were rated highly for Class VII contractors.

The sample consisted of indigenous small building contractors in one industry operating in Tanzania only and did not include the perceptions of the foreign contractors based in Dar es Salaam. Future studies are required to expand the current research and investigate this specific aspect further.

The identified “bid/no-bid criteria” information will allow indigenous small building contractors to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of their bidding decision-making process. Emergent findings will enable said contractors to: better fit into the competitive construction business environment; increase their awareness of existing decision-making practices; and develop appropriate strategies for evaluation of opportunities encountered. Cumulatively, these findings benefit small indigenous building contractors by increasing their understanding of the factors influencing bid decision.

The study represents the first empirical study in Tanzania on the critical factors influencing the bid or no-bid decision among the indigenous small building contractors, which face fierce competition from foreign contractors.

Conference report of the Nigerian Library Association 2005 Annual Conference.

To share conference culture and content with wider audience, especially global audience.

The most valuable activities of the conference were the pre‐conference seminars held simultaneously at various venues which inlcuded “Training the trainers on HIV/Aids prevention” and “Internet researching skills for the twenty‐first librarian”.

Provides information of value to information science professionals both in Nigeria and around the world about the state of librarianship in Nigeria and important current issues the profession there must address.

This study aims to investigate the impact of active back-support exoskeletons on muscle activity and range of motion during carpentry tasks, focusing on addressing back disorders in the construction sector. The purpose is to understand how exoskeletons can serve as ergonomic solutions in the construction industry.

Sixteen participants engaged in simulated carpentry framing tasks under “no-exoskeleton” and “active-exoskeleton”. The study measured muscle activity and range of motion during tasks such as measuring, assembly, moving, lifting, installing and nailing. This experimental design was chosen to assess the effectiveness of the exoskeleton in different carpentry scenarios.

The results indicate that the active back-support exoskeleton reduced the back’s range of motion by 3%–26% during various tasks, suggesting its impact on movement limitations. Additionally, the exoskeleton led to reduced muscle activity in most muscles, with task-specific variations. There was an increase in muscle activity by 1–35%, during measuring and assembly tasks, revealing nuanced effects.

The findings may be task-specific, however, the absence of a consistent correlation between muscle activity and range of motion suggests potential complexities that warrant further investigation.

This research contributes to the understanding of exoskeletons in construction, emphasizing that task-specific designs are crucial for addressing unique work requirements. The study provides valuable data on the diverse effects of exoskeletons in different carpentry tasks.