Nigerian universities and other tertiary institutions have benefited from the N500 million research grants extended by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
The grants is meant to facilitate research and innovations to promote developments in the Nigerian telecommunications industry.
This was disclosed by the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, at a two-day Regional Roundtable with Academia, Industry and other Stakeholders which ended in Kano at the weekend.
He said the funds have been committed to research grants to universities and tertiary institutions, including professorial chairs in the universities in salient areas to drive technology development.
Professor Danbatta said the commission is now focused on supporting the academia in the commercialisation of the prototypes from these innovative researches as this is relevant to the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy’s policy towards achieving indigenous technology for sustainable development of our country.
The roundtable, he said, was to provide the necessary platform to support the commercialisation of locally- developed telecommunications innovations which NCC has been sponsoring.
The NCC boss said, “The commission collaborates with the academia in maximising the contributions of tertiary institutions to innovations and sustainable development of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry as finance is needed to drive possible success of these endeavours.”
Earlier, NCC’s Executive Commissioner, Technical Services, Engr Ubale Maska, said the commission has so far awarded 49 telecom- based research grants to the academia out of which 10 prototypes were successfully developed and displayed to industry stakeholders.
