The Managing Director, Bank of Industry, Mr. Rasheed Olaoluwa has said that for the nation to adequately harness its abundance natural resources for industrialization, there must be synergy between the private sector and research centers.
Olaoluwa, who spoke as a guest at the Nigeria Society of Engineers (NSE) Council meeting in Abuja, noted that while some of the nation’s research institutes had developed a number of new technologies, it was worrisome that they had not been connected to the markets where they were mostly needed.
He stated that as part of the moves to encourage the linkage, BoI had struck a deal with the Federal a institute of Industrial Research (FIIRO) to fund any Small and Medium Scale operator willing to leverage on its innovatons for business concern.
According to him, in order to facilitate the conversion of some of these new technologies into bankable projects, research centres such as FIIRO and NASENI, must package products in a language that would be understood by the private sector operators.
He said,”I visited FIIRO and was positively surprised that they have developed over 50 technologies that this government can leverage on to advance our agro-processing sector.What we have agreed with the agency is that we will support SMEs that want to use FIIRO technology.
And we have entered into partnership that is working. “I think what FIRO and NASENI need to do is to articulate the prototype of the various researches and package them in a recognizable language that can be understood by industry operators. They need to be told how the technologies can be process into bankable projects to generate revenue.
“There should really be partnership between the private sector and the nation’s research institutes so that they can leverage on what has been developed by research institutes.”
source: NAN
