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Despite the learning opportunities inherent in Nigeria's history and the country's access to mainstream and alternative development paradigms through decades of development cooperation, its successive post-independence leaders have failed to leverage these opportunities to build a strong, cohesive and prosperous nation. This paper uses comparative desk research to explore key initiatives taken by Japan in its quest for development and, provides some explanations why the replication of similar transformative initiatives in Nigeria remains elusive. Specifically, the study contends that the extractive political and economic institutions foisted on the country by its post-independence leaders, colonial legacy and political instability, mono-economy, policy inconsistency, widespread corruption, among other factors, account for its inability to learn from the development milestones of Japan and indeed other developed nations. The paper concludes that while the lessons offered in Japan's development pathways remain useful to Nigeria, the 'critical historical junctures' and global architecture navigated by the former for its development have changed. Hence, Nigerian leaders must negotiate the country's development within the currents of contemporary realities, eschewing those conducts that undermine inclusive prosperity. The study contributes to the broader discourses on development assistance, knowledge transfers and socio-political impediments to the transformative use of knowledge in receiving countries.

Intergroup contact occurring through indirect means such as the internet has the potential to improve intergroup relationships and may be especially beneficial in high conflict situations. Here we conducted a three-timepoint online experiment to ascertain whether the use of a conversational agent in E-contact platforms could mitigate interethnic prejudices and hostility among Afghanistan’s historically segregated and persistently conflictual ethnic groups. 128 Afghans of Pashtun, Tajik, and Hazara backgrounds were assigned to one of four E-contact conditions (control with no conversational agent and three experimental groups that varied in the conversational agent settings). Participants in the experimental conditions contributed more ideas and longer opinions and showed a greater reduction in outgroup prejudice and anxiety than those in the control group. These findings demonstrate that E-contact facilitated by a conversational agent can improve intergroup attitudes even in contexts characterized by a long history of intergroup segregation and conflict.