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Nigeria can acquire technology

Technology
acquisition is a very complex subject matter. It covers a number of
areas. You can acquire technology effectively if your education system
is very good, meaning that you are teaching your young people how to do
things properly and, therefore, you acquire technology through
knowledge.

You can also
acquire technology if your research and development are excellent,
meaning that your laboratories are good, your workshops are perfect,
and your scientists are very well trained and, therefore, you acquire
technology originally.

If you cannot
acquire it through these strategies, you can acquire it by transfer. If
you cannot evolve it in your own institutions, you can transfer
technology by just buying it and that is called the outright purchase
method.

The other way you
can acquire technology is through licencing. You licence the technology
from a foreign country and you use it to modernise your economy. Third,
you can do joint venture to produce local goods using foreign
technology.

You can also do
technology transfer using reverse engineering: you look at what has
been done, copy it, and try to improve it a little bit based on your
knowledge. You can also acquire technology through upgrading your
indigenous technologies.

Even using the
technology transfer strategy, if you are not well-prepared, if you do
not have the critical mass of highly-skilled manpower, you cannot
absorb technology through all these methods.

Still a consuming economy

The National Office
for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP) has been in Nigeria
for over 30 years, struggling to see that the indigenous technology
utilised by industries is strong. The challenges are many in trying to
promote indigenous technologies, so that we can be able to ensure
industries utilise our own technologies.

Literally, as you
can see, Nigerian industries utilise foreign technology 100 percent.
The banks use ICTs software and hardware that are completely imported.
If you look at companies like Julius Berger, they use 100 percent
German technology to construct infrastructure. People complain about
power, but there is nothing like Nigerian indigenous technology in that
sector. They are importing technology completely 100 percent.

What the office is
trying to do is to tell the industries to mop up all these foreign
technologies in terms of the expertise, the know-how, patent trademark,
all the industrial designs that are used for production in our country
and then ask universities, polytechnics, and research institutions to
look at those areas of need to do relevant research, instead of doing
low research and development that cannot be mainstreamed into the
industries.

Local technology not good enough

For industries to
remit technology fees to foreign countries, their own technology
agreement has to pass through NOTAP by law and what we see is alarming.
Every single industry imports technology into this country at a very
high price. I have seen a company paying for technology fees in terms
of consultancy over a short period of time for the design of plant,
providing due diligence on proof of the design, and supervising the
manufacture for over N20 billion. I have seen in the power sector,
consultancy for a foreign company to come here to do feasibility and
checking the status of power plants for more than $20 million. It is
alarming seeing this kind of thing.

When you see this
data, what the companies or the public institutions always say is that
Nigerians do not have the capacity and capability to do these things.
This is literally the message: that 103 universities in this country
are not bringing out engineers, doctors, and other scientists for them
to be able to do what they want; that out of 125 polytechnics, the kind
of technical manpower required in the industries is not available; and
our 200 research organisations are not bringing out the kind of
technologies they require to operate to produce their products.

Way out

We import
technology from North America, Europe, South East Asia, and in each of
those countries, you will find out that they have got a viable,
well-known national science, technology and innovation policies that
are well-researched and based on statistics. Also, in those countries,
investment in research and development is very high and varies from one
to five percent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

When you are
investing those levels of finances into science and technology research
and development, you will see its impact. In most of these countries,
you will not see poverty as it is in our country or weak infrastructure
as we have here because when you invest in research and development,
you become innovative and come up with solutions.

Again, Nigeria must
invest in and heavily deploy information and communication technology
(ICTs) for our operations. ICTs automate things. Nigeria has to improve
on its efforts to ensure that it happens. We must learn from those
countries where institutions that innovate actually partner with each
other.

Additionally, in
most of these countries where they have crude raw materials, you will
never see them exporting their crude and importing refined things. Most
importantly, their universities are very vibrant, with good
laboratories and workshops; therefore, they are able to produce good
engineers. We have to learn from that so that our education system
becomes one of the tops in the world.