By Ngozi Nwankwo
The Organising Committee of the TETFund National Research Fair/Exhibition has announced that it is in receipt of over 1,600 entries in the maiden edition of the programme.
This is even as it has extended the submission of concept notes by one week.
In an interview with reporters yesterday in Abuja, Chairman of the committee, Engr. Umar Bindri called on Nigerians yet to submit their proposals to take advantage of the one week extension to do so.
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Billed for November 17 to 22, the TETFund National Research Fair/Exhibition aims at bridging the gap between research, innovation and the market.
Engr Bindri said the five-day event will provide a platform for researchers, innovators, manufacturers, investors, venture capitalists as well as policy makers to showcase their products to the market.
He said the Fair will support and promote homegrown technologies to emerge as businesses and solution providers, which ultimately will reduce the dependence on foreign technologies, save foreign exchange, create massive jobs and generate wealth, especially for the country’s teeming youth population.
While expressing the commitment of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) in supporting cutting-edge researches and its application for economic development, the agricultural engineer said the event would showcase practical research outcomes and scalable prototypes to potential investors and entrepreneurs for commercialization.
He disclosed that at the expiration of the submission deadline, submissions would be screened and pruned down before the commencement of the programme.
It would be recalled that the submission was earlier scheduled from 9th to 30th September, 2024.
“We have two categories of submissions. One is the formal institutions: the universities, polytechnics, research institutes, colleges of education. The second is the informal institutions like the pantakers, creative people.
“The submissions in the formal one is around 1,300. The informal one is around 300. So we have between 1,500 to 1,600. But we have extended by another week. So by next week we are going to do the final close down.
“We want to make sure that submission must be formal. We don’t want somebody to come to the gate with his invention begging, saying he is from your village. We cannot make progress using those primitive ways of doing things,” Bindri said.
On what makes this fair stand out from others, he said: “When you see a winning technology, we bring the intellectual property people through this committee to help you. We will bring the funders to see it and convince them so that they can invest.”
The panel is a sub-committee of the National Research Fund Screening and Monitoring Committee (NRFS&MC) of TETFund.
Also speaking, Chairman of NRFS&MC and member of TETFair Organising Committee, Prof. Hayward Mafuyai, said it is looking for ‘low-hanging technological fruits that are ready for the market’.
Prof. Mafuyai announced that patent lawyers will be in attendance to offer expert advice and assistance to innovators on securing patents and commercializing their creations.
“Hopefully, we are looking forward that some agreements would be struck. And that some of those good products that can go straight into production will be struck. And if that happens, we will be making another step in the right direction, particularly at this time that we need all sources of revenue to be generated, jobs to be created,” he said.
The move, the Don said, is in line with President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.