The National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) will roll out its products and technology by Q1 2024, under a technology transfer plan, Mr Khalil Suleiman Halilu, Executive Vice Chairman of the tech agency says.
“We are going to do this through technology transfer,” the new NASENI chief promises, noting that the era of stacking prototypes on shelves has ended in the government tech agency as “all its products and technologies must find their ways to the market.”
Halilu, who disclosed in Abuja last week while setting a Q1 2023 target for the Nigeria market debut of “some tangible products emanating from NASENI’s prototypes” through technology transfer arrangements.
According to him, “we just came back from China with the Vice President from the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Forum where we signed a $2 billion dollar partnership MOU for technology transfer into Nigeria which is something we were able to achieve in just five weeks of operations. At the same forum, we received a lot of partners that provided letters of Intent to partner with us, to invest in the country’s economy amounting to $4 billion.”
Mr Khalil Suleiman Halilu, Executive Vice Chairman of National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI).
Why NASENI is going the technology transfer path
“Ever since we made the announcement to go into technology transfer particularly,” the NASENI EVC says, “especially the intention to have our products in the market, we have been receiving a lot of interests from private sector organisations looking out for our capacity, the spread and goodwill which we are endowed with being a government organisation and how they can partner with us.”
On his watch at NASENI, Halilu’s vision for the agency’s products and technologies is to make them available in every household in Nigeria in the next few years.
Part of his preoccupations since assuming office in September is to give adequate attention to enhance the human capital potential of NASENI through improved motivation for staff to enable them to adjust to the transformations to be introduced in the system. Also, stakeholders’ engagements and efforts to rebrand the agency around its products and technologies have remained top priorities.
“We are going to do a national rebranding to have footsteps of NASENI products in every household in the country. In the next few years this is what Nigerians should expect. We are no longer going to sit back to watch endless research and prototypes, keeping them on the shelves,” Halilu says.
“We will take them to the market so that Nigerians can consume them. In fact, one of our next year plans is to have NASENI Showrooms in key cities of the country. So that NASENI products are not things you view only on televisions but anyone could walk into our product outlets to experience those technologies that we’ve been talking about. And that is another way we will be expecting the public to hold us accountable as part of the promises we made.”
The NASENI EVC who says that he met lots of wonderful research with over 150 products at prototype level when he came on board notes that “the commercialization aspects are very little. Coming from my background of manufacturing and technology innovation, I believe the whole essence of doing research is to transform it into meaningful products that will have impacts on the economy.”
According to him, “we just came back from China with the Vice President from the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Forum where we signed a $2 billion dollar partnership MOU for technology transfer into Nigeria which is something we were able to achieve in just five weeks of operations. At the same forum, we received a lot of partners that provided letters of Intent to partner with us, to invest in the country’s economy amounting to $4 billion.”
The China trip can deliver about $6 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) to Nigeria, Halilu says noting that NASENI received interests in areas like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Electric Vehicles (EVs), agricultural equipment, electronics and electrical equipment, among others.
“Everyone is looking forward to Africa, there is no better time than now to leapfrog development, reduction of unemployment and alleviation of poverty. We have resources in abundance and we have to add value to whatever we are doing. One of the alarming things in our economy is the fact that we are adding little or no value to our commodities, yet we are heavily a consuming economy with a big workforce. We are trying to see how we are going to change that narrative; given the kind of mandate we have at NASENI,” according to Halilu.
He reckons that Nigeria cannot afford to continue to export her raw materials, hence “we have set up strategies, outfits and partners to see to the kind of policies as well as government inputs to support our desire to add value to our commodities and raw materials before exports.”
Under NASENI’s stakeholder engagements plan, many organisations have shown interest in its activities for collaboration and products offtake. One of such partners, Halilu says, was the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), which has committed $200 million in a procurement agreement with NASENI “as long as our agency could produce the kind of products they consume.”
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