Twenty five Nigerian firms have been selected for the $10.5m research projects by the Presidential Implementation Committee (PIC) on Technology Transfer/ Information Exchange between Nigeria and the Czech Republic.
The chairman of the committee, Mohammed Dahiru, said the partnership between both countries had yielded N9bn direct intervention fund for the 25 companies to boost research and development based economic activities in Nigeria.
He spoke in Abuja yesterday while announcing the results of successful top 25 applicants and five others on the waiting list under the Delta-2 Programme, CZECH-Nigeria Bilateral Co-Funding R&Ds for 2023.
He said the 25 companies, which scaled evaluation process of the assessment committee criteria, would receive funding from the Czech Republic-Nigeria Co-funding R&Ds project next year.
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He said the Czech Republic was supporting Nigeria technology-based enterprises with $10m (N4.5bn) with another match-up fund of same amount already approved by the Federal Government of Nigeria.
Co-chairman, PIC and Executive Vice Chairman, National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure, Prof. Mohammed Sani Haruna, said President Muhammadu Buhari approved N2bn (about $5.7m) in profitable manufacturing and commercialization of successful research products.
He said: “To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time in the history of Nigeria that private sector, academia and the public sector are collaborating to jointly submit research and development proposals with work-plans for commercialization and mass production from the onset backed by business plans.
“This cooperation between Nigeria and the Czech Republic and the collaboration between NASENI and TA CR is teaching us methods of deploying applied research and the best option to forge marriage between private sector, academia and the government otherwise known as the Triple Helix”.
