ACADEMIC RESEARCH PROJECTS AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD

The development of a nation depends largely on its commitments and priority it accorded to education sector. Education is the powerful instrument that transform a nation from one state to another, shapes human potentials and behavior in order to contribute to the nation building, global well being and its advancement. Institutions of higher learning and universities in any society should have been the avenues where human talent can be explored and utilized for the purpose of building strong, dynamic and vibrant nation. They are centres for knowledge acquisition, dissemination, application and innovation. Reports have shown that educational institutions and universities in Europe and America have been the sources of most the social science, pure science and technological innovations through academic research projects and with remarkable achievements.There is constant transfer of academic researches from institutions and universities to organizations. Despite the abundant intellectuals in institutions and universities of developing world, academic research projects are weak and have failed to meet the developmental needs , as well as to address the economic, sociocultural and political problems of these countries. The academic researches are the basic foundations upon which development of a nation could be realized from all spheres, as it provides opportunity for transforming human and material potentialities combine together to achieve a set objective(s). The 2008 ranking of top 200 universities in the world has exposed the weakness of these universities for the simple fact that academic research is one of the criteria for assessing these universities. According to the ranking statistics, Africa and Latin America, has one university each, Asia with more than 20 universities including Japan and all others hail from America, Europe and Australia. Therefore, the paper will examine the challenges and prospects of academic research projects in educational institutions of the developing world in relation to its relevance to development.