The National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion, NOTAP, regulates the inflow of foreign technology into Nigeria. Its position is that Nigerians are consuming foreign technologies because they have no alternative. 

President Goodluck Jonathan flanked by Governor Aliyu Wammako and the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III while Governor Saidu Dakingari of Kebbi ZState (l) . Filed photo

Against this backdrop, the agency has begun moves to reduce the consumption of foreign technologies in Nigeria.

The assumption is that, if imported goods are domesticated, what is coming into the country will have the maturity to create and recreate high quality technologies, which will translate to jobs and wealth creation.

In this interview, the Director General of NOTAP, Dr. Umar Bindir, an agricultural engineer, speaks on how the agency is digitizing the Almajiri schools as a step to sowing the seed of economic prosperity in Nigeria.

What is the main objective of the Almajiri schools digitization?

The knowledge of our people have to be raised to the next level. We have to also learn from other countries to produce the critical mass of the highly skilled manpower everywhere. You may ask, where is the factory to actually produce these people? The factory that can produce these people is the education system, from primary school up to the university and research; this is where the whole activity is.

If you plant the wrong tree, you will get the wrong thing. Planting of seeds is very critical and where you plant your seeds is what will dictate what will come out; in the education and knowledge system, the seeds start from primary school.

But now, most countries breeding this high number of critical mass ensure that every single five-year-old has an opportunity to enter into the primary school. In Nigeria, we have only two opportunities; you are either rich and you send your children to private primary school, where the uniform is nice, classrooms are air conditioned, the teachers are available but it is very expensive or you are an average

Nigerian and you struggle to send your child to the public school, where some children study under trees, some in classrooms without windows, some do not have teachers. But now government has realized, particularly in the North, where so many children that are not going to school are operating under the aegis of the Almajiris.

Tell us about the Almajiri syndrome?

Almajiri in the Islamic tradition is actually a high caliber word, it arose from Alimajirud, people moving from one part of the world to the other looking for Islamic or Arabic knowledge.

In our country, it has dropped to the lowest level, Almajiri now is a stigma. Nobody wants his child to be an Almajiri, the begging group and there are so many of them.

In the northern part of Nigeria, there are over 30million of these children. Now, the government magnanimously has introduced the Almajiri school. To a certain extent, I see it as a (third tier frontier) education below where people are mopping the children and letting them go to the Almajiri school formally.

Almajiri school image

A typical Almajiri school has an image, they have this wooden tablet and every child has one. They use charcoal to write and sit on the floor to be taught by a Mallam.

I thought we could use this government project to kill two birds with one stone; so we introduced the aloha, which is the state of the Almajiri  but we put a device on it.

What is digital in it?

This is what has become very popular and cheap, a digital tablet. It is the same tablet but we have graduated it to a different level. The digital tablet has an application for even the Koranic teaching or Arabic teaching.

We take the video of the Mallam, go into the production system, break it into chapters and create an interactive video using the power of ICT. By the time the software is downloaded from the internet, you have options to go backward or forward.

Because we are in a digital world, it has gone beyond Arabic. We can fix arithmetic or any other form of education including videos to educate young children on how to make different kinds of things such as pastries, cook food. All forms of educative videos can be uploaded into the tablet for the children.

We are creating the digital aloha to ensure the Almajiri boys have access to the highest quality of education in the land.

Scope

This is a national project, it is about education, it is about knowledge, we must lift ourselves to the next level.

This is planting knowledge seeds properly, from primary school, children have started thinking correctly. In the next ten years when you go to an Almajiri school or any village and you are talking to a child, you will get them speaking refined English at the age of six.

We are changing the wood to plastic; that means this project is environmentally friendly.

Internationally, we want a product that will come out of Nigeria. We will brand this as a designed, made and sold in Nigeria.

Affordability

That is a whole market for Nigeria to actually produce these digital tablets. We are talking to a Chinese manufacturer, we want to make the tablet affordable such that when you calculate the landing cost, the whole thing assembled should not be above N10,000.

In Nigeria alone, we have 30 million of these children. If you make the tablet for the children, you have got N10, 000 multiplied by 30 million, and you have got N300 billion industry in Nigeria alone.

Imagine the implication  of this on the manufacturing sector; imagine the implication for the software gurus that I will need to do the tablet.

The software engineers coming out from university; they can possibly through this become entrepreneurs.

There is a board listing all the education materials at N100 each, which you can recharge at just N50 and download  six educational software because you are thinking of your own constituency, your children in the village.

Powering system

This new form of enterprise is actually born in Nigeria. To recharge it, we are introducing solar trees. The umbrella is the solar panel, the trunk is the battery and entrepreneurs can charge this and other gadgets such as phones and what have you.

You mean the digital aloha can become alternative teacher?

Yes, my hope is that this is now the new teacher, you can teach things where there is no teacher. You can teach high technology under a tree and you can now have housewives participating in the education of their children because there are videos.

Language

The software can be developed in any language. You can have the Yoruba language with the Yoruba traditional knowledge. Imagine a source of high level knowledge for children. You can spend time, listen to people, learn other languages just by getting package for as low as N100 especially at this level of children where they are like magnet for knowledge, anything that enters their brain never comes out.

Readiness

We have patented this in Nigeria; the next level is to secure resources to make at least 18 different prototypes.

We will vary the size of the tablets. We will have a smaller ones and also the normal size. We will practice with different materials for the board all in an attempt to make good and strong materials but of lower cost. So, we have to do the engineering and technology based on the feasibility to produce within our target which is the N10,000 mark or lower.

If we are to make the N10, 000 mark with the tablet or lower, then there is a lot of commercial experimentation. I am traveling to China, I am going to India also. All these are going to cost money and I am also to discuss with the manufacturer of the tablet.

What we are demonstrating here is that we can think and we can also come out with an innovation that can win global prize.

Launching date

I am not sure of this year but that is my target. My target is to launch this in the last quarter of 2015. By then all the tensions concerning elections would have gone down. This type of project, when launched, does not need to have a political sensitivity, there is no enemy in education.