Many diseases and natural disasters like poor farm yields due to desertification, and erosion, hitherto attributed to the gods and witchcraft, were later found to be caused by microorganisms and global warming caused by activities of man. This was possible through research.
In this report, Financial Vanguard sought the opinion of stakeholders on how research and innovation could be used for economic development especially with the current dip in price of crude oil, Nigeria’s major export product, in the global market. Nigeria, a mono product economy, which depends almost solely on crude oil for foreign earnings, urgently needs to look inwards.
Best time for research: All the contributors agreed that there is no better time to use research and innovation to take Nigeria out of the doldrums. “There is no better time for research than now when Nigerians are trying to look inwards to find alternatives by use of locally developed technologies. Research has the potential of growing the economy. This is the right time for it,” said Prof. Idris Bugaje, Director-General, National Research Institute for Chemical Technology , Zaria. Prof. Joseph Ahaneku, VC of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, in his address at the 6th edition of Nigerian Universities Research and Development (R&D) Fair held in UNIZIK, said: “For the national economy, R&D could yield new technologies and products, generate solutions to existing challenges and boost global competitiveness of its goods and services.” “If we are trying to solve problems, we have to understand the nature of the problems and we do that through collaboration by researchers and industry,” said Dr. Ferdinand Che, Associate Dean, School of Business & Entrepreneurship, American University of Nigeria. He noted that research is a fundamental part of national development. For Prof. Samuel Wara, Director, Research, Innovation & Discovery, Covenant University, research must be vision-driven. “If we are going to grow the economy based on research, then we will be looking at solution, industry and sector-based research because that is the only way researches can be impactful.” Solution-based research: In order to get the needed impact on society, research must be tailored towards solving societal problems – health, agriculture, infrastructure, etc. Said Wara: “Breakthroughs and products emanating from the researches would need to be pushed out for public consumption.” For Bugaje, research is not enough. “You have to move your research into innovation, which is what will help move the economy forward. Innovation means new processes, new products or better ways of carrying out existing processes. So we need to get our act right. We have the potential and the manpower; what is required is the policy direction.” “The obvious areas of diversification are Agriculture, health, power etc. Fundamentally, this is about recognising the opportunities and doing something about them. For example, government can make the environment coducive for entrepreneurship to flourish. People must be able to create something and to make profit from that while making positive impact on society,” said Che. Policy direction: “If Nigerian universities are doing researches that are common knowledge elsewhere, they will not contribute to economic development. So we must take our researches to the next level. Get those that are really viable properly patented internationally. The statistics of Nigeria’s patent registrations in the US is very low. In 2014, Nigeria registered only 70 patents, South Africa, Kenya, Algeria are all ahead of Nigeria. SA had over 1,000 patent registrations and Nigeria had about 100 so we have a long way to,” said Bugaje. Problem: Although R&D is pivotal to economic development, successive governments in Nigeria have consistently underfunded the sector. Said Bugaje: “Research is not recognised in the national economy generally and you can see that from the way it is being funded by government. For instance, in the 2016 budget, the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology got 0.67 per cent of the budget. This government is new, I hope by the time they get their economic direction properly, they will pay more attention to R&D.” Giving an example of how research is contributing to economic development, Dr. Braimoh Bello, senior medical scientist/research technical leader at Johannesburg-based Centre for Statistical Analysis and Research (CESAR) said: “There are different aspects of research – food, water, health, social and environmental issues and government has to be involved in all. “South Africa is a research- intensive country. I was contracted by their Dept of Environmental Affairs to provide training on statistics. I asked them what they do, one of them said they are responsible for removing alien plants. I asked what alien plants are and she said the amount of water available to the country depends on the amount of water in the aquifers and the amount of water in the aquifers can be depleted by the alien plants that are not contributing anything to the vegetative quality of the country. They map out areas with alien plants and measure the volume and quality of water in that area before and after. So they are able to say this is the amount of water we need for the whole country, this is the amount of water we have, this is the amount of water we can add if we can remove our alien plants.” Way forward: “After identifying the kind of research – impactful, solution-driven, industry-based – how are you going to drive them? On individual or collaborative basis? A university should be known for something so you look at those universities or individuals that have something in common with respect to the drive you want for the economy. For instance, you may want to drive issues of security, power/energy, transportation, environment, manufacturing in different areas like textiles, so you begin to form research clusters that will work in those areas. “Next, what facilities should be in place to undertake these researches? We will look at literary or library, ICT, specialised laboratory and human resources. We may create partnerships and collaborations to be able to undertake these researches,” said Wara. Endowed chairs: “We may create some endowed chairs or centres of excellence in universities. How much of technology are the Technology Incubation Centres incubating? How much exploitation of raw materials is Raw Materials Research and Development Council doing? One centre of excellence may be that of Energy Resources, another may be dealing with global warming and environment. “Hunger and poverty are issues. Over 791million people live in chronic undernourishment in developing countries and about 2.2 billion people live on less than $2 a day. So researches to produce food and make them available to people at affordable cost will be undertaken to deal with them. Entrepreneurship will help deal with poverty so we need to promote small and medium scale industries. Security and conflict resolutions are issues, what must we do to build peace across the country?” There are also Health, Housing, Transportation and Education issues – what are we doing about them? “asked Wara. “We have to find ways to help micro enterprises to employ more people, create more opportunities that will lead to jobs and by people having more jobs, they will be creating more economic activities which will lead to the development we are talking about. Research will help us to understand our problems and our weaknesses so in presenting those pictures, people can recognise where the opportunities lie,” said Che.