Ex-VC Urges Partnerships To Boost Research, Innovations

Former Vice Chancellor, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Prof. Mike Faborode has called for increased partnerships between research institutes and industries to facilitate research and innovation.
The university teacher made the call in a lecture he delivered at an Academy Technology Dinner/Lecture last Wednesday night in Lagos.
The event had the theme, “Cracking the Code of Industry- Academia Partnership in Nigeria: Challenge to Knowledge Academies”.
It was organised by the Nigeria Communications Commissions (NCC).
Faborode said that research and innovation were key drivers of competiveness and economic growth.
The professor said that the leap from industrial revolution to the digital revolution had largely been anchored by innovation.
He said that in recent decades, modern technology movements had led to immense creativity and entrepreneurship which resulted in economic transformation for selected regions.
Faborode said that recent efforts in China to reform national innovations systems showed the importance of motivating universities and research institutes to build up industry capabilities and promote industrial linkages.
The professor said that Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policy should instigate industrial progress.
“Although innovations fuel manufacturing, innovation is not an activity by itself; hence, we need to properly establish this link.
“A firm innovates to create a new product, process or gain a new market superior to what exists in quality and price.
“STI policy essentially links the laboratory, the design offices to the factory through the convergence of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and consumers to create new markets locally to raise the Gross Domestic Product.
“Thus, we need to build a professional alliance to turn the situation in Nigeria into an opportunity to revive industrial production,” he urged.
Faborode said that the emergence of World Bank- sponsored African Centres of Excellence (ACE) was helpful.
“To World Bank, world class universities are research universities that play critical roles within the tertiary education system in training professionals needed for economic development and generating knowledge in support of national innovation system,” he said.
According to the professor, what make universities essential to the innovation ecosystem are the things that make them different from businesses and governments.
He said that universities were built for collaboration, learning, discovery and unlocking of imagination.
Faborode added that universities were incubators for startups and technology transfer.
The NCC Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umar Danbatta, said that the commission gave up to N50 million recently to academic staff of various universities to facilitate research that would translate into innovations and containment of challenges in the ICT industry.
He hoped that the collaboration would bring about disruptive innovations.
“The collaboration will usher in new ways of doing things, the kind that will enhance efficiency and productivity.
“The commission understands the importance of partnership; that is why we have it on our eight-point agenda,’’ he said.