From David Onwuchekwa, Nnewi

The National Board for Technology Incubation (NBTI), South East zone, Nnewi, Anambra State has organized a one-day stakeholders forum on science, technology and industries.

The forum centered its discussions on technology sourcing, linkages and collaboration with industry and academia with top members of the NBTI and resource persons from various areas of industry and technology in attendance.

In her opening remarks, the South East zone director of the NBTI, Dr Uche Chukwu said for goods and services production in a country to impact positively on the economy, that the goods and services must be need-driven, qualitative and globally competitive.

Dr Chukwu noted that knowledge drove the the production and actualization of goods and services and as such countries that had advanced in knowledge achieved enhanced gross domestic product (GDP).

She said that products of such countries would find markets in all parts of the world, adding that this would be achieved through a working relationship between the academia and industry supervised by the government.

“It is important to note that Technology Incubation Programme (TIP) being a popular economic development tool used by both developing and developed economies to fast-track local and regional economic development is a veritable mechanism for the commercialization of Research and Development (R&D) result.

“It is an integrated support programme provided by governments, academia and private sector either individually or in partnership with the intention of creating and nurturing of knowledge-based startups by assisting budding entreprenuers in the development of new technology firms both startups and fledgling.

“It seeks to effectively link technology, talent, capital, and know-how to leverage entrepreneurial skills to accelerate the development of new companies considered to originate from intellectual properties as well as speeding up commercialization of research and development results and innovation efforts, ” she said.

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Dr Uche added that the programme developed value re-orientation, by creating an enabling environment that encouraged personal initiative, creativity, innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship.

According to her, since the establishment of the pioneer TIC Lagos in 1993 with the takeover decree No. 5, 1995, over thirty seven centres and six zonal offices had been established.

She said among them is NBTI, South East zone with the headquarters in Nnewi, Anambra State which she explained is currently supervising the activities of five centres in the South East namely TIC Nnewi; Aba in Abia State; Owerri, Imo State; Enugu, Enugu State and Abakiliki, in Ebonyi State.

She further explained that the TIC had recorded a lot of success stories in pursuit of its mandate. She named technology skill transfer to youth, products analysis, job creation, products certification and nurturing over 2,000 small and medium scale entrepreneurs, among other things.

Dr Uche and Dr Michael Amonye at the event jointly presented a paper titled Triple Helix Model: Panacea for fast tracking economic growth and industrialization of Nigeria.

The paper did a comprehensive analysis of the key factors of economic development and growth, the GDP, industries, government role and need for collaboration.

In his own address, the centre manager of TIC, Nnewi, Dr Ugochukwu Okafor said the Nnewi centre had remained focused towards achieving its objectives which he said had resulted into graduating fifty entrepreneurs involved in different businesses ranging from agro allied, manufacturing, fabrication, waste recycling, ICT and electronics essential oil to automobiles and chemical processes, among others.

He said that some of the centre’s graduates had built their own factories.

There were goodwill messages from the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Tertiary, Science, Technology and Mineral Resources, among others.