TETFUND: Smoothing The Path Toward Research

The commercialization of research output, without doubt, provides new revenue generation and job creation to any country.

Taking innovations to market through commercialization, will no doubt provide an economic benefit to any country.

Research Commercialisation also provides new products and services that can be used to solve some of life’s most pressing problems, as well as making incremental improvements to the quality of life for consumers and business effectiveness across a wide variety of domains.

Despite the importance of Commercialisation of research, Nigeria in the past years has not been able to turn research products into tangible developmental outcomes for socioeconomic growth of the country.

It is against this background that the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), in collaboration with Innov8 Hub, introduced a programme for researchers and academics in Government Universities across Nigeria to help them translate ideas into innovation.

The programme, called TETFund Alliance For Innovative Research (TETFAIR), is a year-long opportunity for researchers and academics in Nigerian universities to transform their ideas into market-driven solutions, including the development and fabrication of prototypes.

The Innov8 Hub is a creative space where ideas are conceptualised and transformed to development.

At the Innov8 Hub, aspiring inventors, researchers and academics are trained and developed to navigate through the Nigerian innovation and invention ecosystems.

Selected teams of researchers and academics with ideas for innovative solutions in areas of focus are being taken through a journey that combines technology and product development along with venture creation.

The Executive Secretary of TETFund, Architect Sonny Echono, recently led a delegation of TETFund officials to Innov8 Hub to inspect projects being developed at the ongoing TETFAIR Prototype Development Bootcamp.

TETFAIR Prototype Development Bootcamp, where cutting-edge technology meets expertise at Innov8 Hub, as participants continue to fabricate.

Currently, Team 1 of TETFAIR Prototype Development Bootcamp, is developing a non-invasive, non-contact, animal welfare-supported weight while Team 11 is currently developing the initial prototype of their innovation which is an Automated Textile Printing Dryer at Innov8Hub.

The stage of TETFund TETFAIR is a phase where the participants work in their respective teams alongside experts and mentors of Innov8Hub and Make lab to develop the initial prototype of their innovation which includes the high-risk components of the product.

Speaking during the monitoring tour, Echono said academic research from Nigerians will soon be translated into commercial purposes for the benefits of all.

He said the hub serves as an opportunity to make a difference in the life of people as well as transform the fortune of the country both intellectually and materially.

According to him, of all the gifts God has given mankind; it is the intellect that will make the most impact, hence the need to invest in researchers.

“A lot of what is happening in this hub is agriculture and Nigeria has comparative advantage in agriculture.

“With dedication, commitment and the right policies, we can be able to move into that agricultural space to help our people.

“At the Fund, we are doing a lot of intervention in the innovation space this year. We want to replicate the hub in our tertiary institutions.

“The only challenge we have is the incubation, guidance and exposure to what is happening in the other climes but we will continue to partner on training our researchers,” he said.

He also promised to bring researchers from the polytechnics and Colleges of Education (COE) to the hub for their skills to be enhanced as researchers from universities had benefited in the past.

He, therefore, said that entrepreneurial programmes similar to what is obtainable at the hub will be replicated in various institutions to teach the young students.

Meanwhile, Neta Hanin, Programme Director, Innov8, said the hub was created to enable and equip researchers in the nation’s institutions to transform their research based ideas into real commercialised solutions.-Hanin said that doing this would impact the society as well as impact the way researchers teach and implement the knowledge and transparency to their students.

“TETFAIR is a year-long programme, which started its first bootcamp December 2022 to January2023.

“We focused on equipping the participants with all the knowledge and methodologies they need to be familiar with for the year-long journey, which we are using during the process of the product development and technology development.

“So, we went through classes that were about ideation problems, the finishing, business development, market analysis, market research, and also we learned about all the proper processes of product, product development and technology development,” she said.

She added that the hub had been able to produce 16 teams, comprising 57 participants now developing prototypes of their innovations.

Hanin further said her job is to enable and equip the researchers in the Nigerian academy to transform their research based ideas into real commercialized solutions that will really impact the society here and which will also eventually of course, impact the way they teach and implement the knowledge and transparency to their students.

“TETFair, as I said, is a year-long program, which started in the first bootcamp last December, January, January. 23 and we started in the first bootcamp, we focused on equipping the participants with all the knowledge and methodologies they need to be familiar with for the year long journey, which we are using during the process of the product development and technology development.

“So, we went through classes that were about ideation problems, the finishing, business development, market analysis, market research, and also, we learned about all the proper processes of product, product development and technology development.

“They met with mentors and experts from the industry gave them feedback on their ideas and the concepts and international but and also local experts, online, new person and eventually they ended up the first bootcamp with them on how to validate and conduct market research and make sure that there is a real need for databases. Not only that, the market research is also meant to make sure that we are experts on the problem that we are trying to solve,” she said.

Prof. Ayotunde Adebambo from the Department of Animal Breeding and Genetic, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, called for support to enable researchers to get value-added and market solutions for their research.