From Felix Ikem, Nsukka
The World Bank Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Power Energy and Development (ACE-SPED), University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) has awarded N12m seed grants to 12 student research groups of UNN.
Prof. Emenike Ejiogu, the Director of UNN World Bank ACE-SPED disclosed this in Nsukka on Wednesday in a remark during the seed grants award ceremony at the university.
He said that the awards are to selected UNN students’ research teams who have generated innovative and entrepreneurship ideas for sustainable energy and power development that will lead to significant commercialization and equally creating scalable solutions to address energy and power problems in Nigeria and the sub-region.
The Director explained that the principal aim of the ACE-SPED Innovation Seed Grants is to furnish
monetary backing for research endeavours that correspond with the innovation objectives of the centre, specifically in domains areas like electric power system development, renewable energy, waste-to-energy
conversion, energy conservation, energy management, energy resource assessment and forecasting, and sustainable energy.
“ACE-SPED is not just a theoretical centre for research, by our mandate we are supposed to be engaging students and staff on issues such as entrepreneurship and innovation.
“So, as part of that mandate instituted a proposal among the students of the centre students of the University of Nigeria and told them to form their research groups and come up with entrepreneurship ideas that can be seeded to grow into businesses.
“After a rigorous process of accepting the written proposals, and shortlisting those groups for interviews we looked at certain criteria such as the possibility of commercialization, and the direct impact it will have on the society, at the end of the process 12 groups and emerged the winners,” he said.
Ejiogu, who is also the Dean Faculty of Engineering, UNN noted further that each of the 12 research groups will be giving one million naira each, while the centre will monitor their progress on how they implement their businesses and technical ideas.
“Our target is that at the end of the day, those proposed businesses will grow into big companies and they will be able to create employment opportunities.
“The good thing is that their proposed research areas are quite broad-based, some put very good proposals on improvement on biogas production, improvements on agricultural production, development of solar chargers for phones and other electronics gadgets in rural areas, among others.
“This 1 million naira is just a seed grant, we will monitor them closely so that by the time they finish the one million naira we will institute another series of competitions among the 12 groups and selectors who passed through the criteria for further funding.
“The idea is to select the best three and grow them into big businesses for commercialization,” he said.
Also speaking, Prof. Victor Aigbodion, the Industrial officer of ACE-SPED UNN said the the seed grant is to help UNN and her students to carry out business research that can solve societal problems for commercialization.
“As the Chairman of this research proposal programme, we received over 30 proposals, but I can assure you that the selected 12 proposals are viable for business research and development.
“In the next 6 months from now we will be getting reports from this award and we will be able to liaise with private industries and government for the commercialization of the research outputs,” he said.
Responding on behalf of other groups, Modesta Eze, Department of Biochemical, and research group member for “Bioethanol Production” and Innocent Okorie, Department of Metallurgical and Material Engineering, and research group member for “Portable Solar Generator,” thanked the Centre for the seed grant and promised to make judicious use of the money.