NCDMB, FI Unveil 17 Portfolio Firms, Pledge Promotion of R&D
Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) on has unveiled 17 portfolio companies that have successfully concluded research- and innovation-based training at its Technology Incubation and Innovation Centre (TIIC).
The board, in a statement, said that this signalled the intensification of its capacity-building initiatives that birthed its Project 100 companies a few years ago.
The 17 companies which had enrolled at the centre as energy industry start-ups were among 54 incubates that underwent the seven-month programme initiated by NCDMB in partnership with the Nigerian chapter of Founder Institute (FI), based in Silicon Valley, California, United States.
The process yielded products in fields such as pipeline protection technology, embedded systems, drilling fluid additives, gas penetration technology, tele-medicine, electric-powered engines for inland water transportation/charging solutions, among others.
In a keynote, the Executive Secretary of the Board, Simbi Wabote, said the programme was established with the strategic intent to serve as a resource centre for obtaining data on priority research areas in the oil and gas industry.
The NCDMB boss who was represented by the Director, Corporate Services, Mr. Patrick Daziba Obah, said that beyond preliminary concerns, how to get investors, potential sponsors, seed funding to enhance business capacities of the portfolio companies posed another subset of challenges.
“We had to do something new in R&D – not just what others were doing,” he emphasised.
In an overview, the board’s Director of Planning, Research and Statistics, Abdulmalik Halilu, emphasised the importance of R&D as a major enabler for local capacity development.
He lamented that over 70 per cent of the software requirements were met through importation. According to him, “under a do-nothing scenario,” Nigeria was losing some $2 billion annually.
Earlier in an opening address, the Managing Director, Founder Institute, Abuja, Mrs. Ajuma Ataguba, commended the NCDMB for its initiatives in capacity building, particularly the establishment of the TIIC.
