A University don, Prof. Kingston Nyamapfene, has said that most intellectual properties churned out by research institutions have not been transformed to commercial products due to lack of innovation hubs.
Nyamapfene, the President of the African University of Science and Technology, Abuja, made statement on Monday in Abuja at the launching of Tangent Eco-Innovation Hub.
AUST is one of the partners that came together to establish Tangent Eco-Innovation Hub project.
Tangent Eco-Innovation Hub is a centre that aims at solving societal problems in environmentally friendly ways through the use of technology.
Various partners in ICT sector, including the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, GT Bank, Etisalat and British Council collaborated with AUST to establish the hub.
Nyamapfene said: “Most of the researches being done in research institutions have strong focus on African problems, yet there is little evidence to show that these volumes of researches are being converted into usable technologies.
“There is a fair amount of very good intellectual property which has not been driven into its full potential for commercialisation.
“Tangent Eco-Innovation Hub will be a place where people with little or no formal education will have opportunity to showcase their talents; an opportunity that is going to unleash unthinkable potential in all.
“It will also be a place where the ubiquitous talents found in rural parts of Africa will find a place and scope to thrive and flourish.”
The Don urged Nigerian youths to come forward with ideas on how to promote their talents or natural gifts in their immediate communities.
In her remarks, Rosaline Agiamoh, the Group Head of Planning and Strategy, G&P Limited, a major partner in the Tangent Hub initiative, described the hub as the address for research and renewable energy technologies.
Agiamoh said: “The hub aims at bringing teams of different affiliated fields and plug them to complement each other, while also ensuring that the programmes are sustainable.
“We don’t want a situation whereby you have a lot of start-ups with huge ideas and no fund to push them through.”
Agiamoh said Tangent would be an engaging hub that would be driven by what each individual team wanted to propose, adding it would help in linking innovations with the market.
She commended the Federal Government for creating the platforms for the innovation hub to be established.
She urged investors to buy into the ideas, given the huge market in African sub-region.
Agiamoh noted that several people were showing interests in technologies coming out from Nigeria.
She said that the recent visit to the country by the Founder of Facebook, Mark Zukerberg, was a testimony to that notion.
The key note speaker at the event, Michael Oluwagbemi, the Chairman of AfriLabs Regional Networks, urged the society should see technology as infrastructure.
Oluwagbemi explained: “Technology should be seen as a necessity just as we consider education as a necessity for self-development and survival.
“Hubs offer business model, cheaper, more efficient and faster route to take innovations to the market place.
“AUST is on the path of linking the entire intellectual prowess across the African continent into a seamless basket through the Tangent innovation hub.
“Hubs are good alternatives to public parks and recreation centres where the youths can be meaningfully engaged by collaborating with one another to solve societal problems.
“Hubs provide opportunities for youths to come together which lead to start-ups who are ready to employ others in commercialising their ideas.
Oluwagbemi commended the initiators of Tangent Eco-innovation Hub and urged them to link up with other hubs for greater innovations and seek solutions to the continent’s problems.
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