The discussions in this paper centre on the innovative use Renewable Raw Materials (RRM) in the Global South (GS) using Nigeria as a case study. Contemporary knowledge is demonstrating innovative use of Renewable Energy (RE) across the globe. Literature in public domain have noted that RE is being considered a major part of development for the economic and technological growth as well as for the growth of sustainable development in Nigeria. Yet evidence shows that despite Nigeria’s status as Africa’s most populous country, the country’s economic progress has been hampered by a lack of enough energy supplies. It has further been argued that due to inadequate harnessing of the proper usage of RE resources and insufficient knowledge of it amongst the general population, Nigeria remains underdeveloped in the consumption of RE supplies as compared to other developing nations. This is due to lack of structural approach in Nigerian government to promote the proper usage of these RE tools and techniques for better economic growth. The country has now developed an Integrated Energy Planning Tool to assist Nigerian policymakers and operators in making better informed decisions about their management and strategies to increase RE access in the country. It is positioned that Nigeria’s economic development is possible through certain RE’s that hold the power and commercial value in the nation. For instance, solar and biomass energies are majorly used energy resources that have made an important contribution to the renewable system for Nigerian people. To this end, the Nigeria Federal Ministry of Environment has concluded that Nigeria lacks in its production of energy through wind power and geothermal power sources as the country’s inner crust cannot produce much heat and there seems to be lack of finance and investment. On the one hand, Nigeria heavily depends on their usage of hydropower that constitutes 20.8% of the total amount of energy utilised by her citizens. On the other hand, the RE source requires modernism and technological innovation in their marketing through which it can add value to the people by providing a cost-effective and price favourable energy supplies. In this regard, the government of Nigeria is identifying and investing in proper power generation from RE tools that might help with sustainable development in the country. This paper argues for the innovative use of RE raw materials as part of the Nigeria energy mix to provide solutions to the perennial energy crises in the country. Considering the other variables involved in the innovative use of RE for development, the paper proposes the use of both positivism (deductive) and interpretivism (inductive) as a research philosophy to demonstrate the need for innovative use of RE raw materials as possible solutions to Nigeria energy inadequacy. The discussion in the paper argues that the economic development of Nigeria’s future depends on the innovative use of RE and the long-term availability of affordable, open and harmless energy for the ecosystem, and that security, climate change and general well-being are closely linked to the usage of RE. The paper concludes that innovative use RE is a sine qua non for sustainable development in Nigeria. Finally, the paper recommends that Nigeria should take advantage of her global partnerships for finance, creative alliance and technologically innovative of RE. In view of the complexity of the Nigerian society, the future work will be empirically based in the collection of primary data with the through a survey questionnaire and IBM SPSS as analytical tools.

Authors: R. Ajani, T.K. Olaniyi, G. Lumakis

Published in: World Congress on Sustainable Technologies (WCST-2022)

• Date of Conference: 6-8  December 2022
• DOI: 10.20533/WCST.2022.0007
• ISBN: 978-1-913572-57-0
• Conference Location: Virtual (London, UK)