By Juliet Umeh

The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, yesterday, said it will help in commercialising research prototypes from Nigerian tertiary institutions, to prove that the over N500 million it spent in facilitating the researches was well spent.

The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, who disclosed this at the ongoing two-day roundtable with Academia, Industry and other Stakeholders, in Lagos, said enough of telecom-based researches have been produced by tertiary institutions since the commission started giving them grants for that purpose.

Danbatta was represented at the event by the Director, Legal and Regulatory Services of the Commission, Ms Josephine Amuwa.

He said: “Appreciable impacts have been made since the Commission began the award of Research Grants for Telecommunications-based Research Innovations from Nigerian Academics. It has now become imperative to focus on the successful commercialisation of these locally developed innovations. They are fundamental to achieving the overall objective of the programme.

“As part of the Commission’s objectives of enhancing indigenous content in the Nigerian Communications sector, we may recall that Research and Prototype Exposition was organised by the Commission to showcase the telecom-based research prototypes to industry stakeholders in February this year.

“It provided opportunity for the beneficiaries of the Commission’s Telecoms-based research grants to display the prototypes they developed to Industry stakeholders such as telecom operators/Vendors, investors, and fellow Academics,” he added.

In his address, Board Chairman of the NCC, Prof. Adeolu Akande said the 2022 Regional Roundtable is targeted at bringing together relevant players and agencies to develop a framework/template for commercializing telecommunication-based research prototypes which emanated from NCC research grants to the academia.

He said: “Experience shows that even the most promising ideas face daunting commercialization challenges as always seen with promising concepts and viable products. This event will provide a forum for stakeholders to share experiences and exchange ideas on the best strategies to adopt in commercializing viable innovative research outputs from our Academia.

Meanwhile, NCC’s Executive Commissioner, Technical Services, Engr. Ubale Maska, said the commission had awarded a total of 49 Telecom-based Research Grants to the Academia of which10 prototypes were successfully developed.