engr. a. umoh mnse

COMMERCIALIZATION OF INDIGENOUS ENGINEERING INVENTIONS AND

INNOVATIONS AND THE PACKAGING FACTOR

Engr Edwin A. Umoh, MNSE Centre for Research and Entrepreneurship Development

Federal Polytechnic, Kaura Namoda, Nigeria

Engr Ahmed A. Lugard, MNSE Office of the Rector

Federal polytechnic, Kaura Namoda, Nigeria

Preamble

Packaging and commercialization of indigenous engineering in Nigeria

Perspectives on packaging

Catalogue of selected engineering innovations in Nigerian Polytechnics

Tackling the packaging challenge

Conclusion

• The theme of this year’s Assembly throw up several questions that arouse the mind.

• This paper revolves around three of such questions:

Preamble

Which engineering are we commercializing?

Which engineering should we commercialize?

Which engineering can we commercialize?

• Commercialization of engineering (COE) is the exploitation of engineering for financial gains

• COE is engineering business in which the results of R & D are translated in marketable products and sold to end-users

• In this paper, we will focus on dominant engineering products such as consumer electronics, automobile, machineries etc

• COE has taken place in Nigeria prior to independence and after. During these periods, trading in imported vehicles, trains, electronics and other engineering goods constituted “Commercialization of engineering”

Which engineering are we commercializing?

• This type of COE profited investors (individuals and corporate entities in the trade) and not Nigeria if we situate “national development” in the context of self-reliance and local content development.

• After more than 50 years, Nigeria is still commercializing engineering for other nations

• A recent survey show that engineering products market (electronics, automobile, machineries etc) in Nigeria is saturated with foreign made products

• Can this type of COMMERCIALIZATION OF ENGINEERING engender national development?

Which engineering are we commercializing? Contd…

• Commercializing engineering for other nations has: Quench our hunger and thirst for self-reliance Stunt tech growth by conditioning us to rely on

the sweat of other nations for our survival Skewed our sense of national pride resulting in

inferiority complexes. The fixation on “technology transfer” is one of it

• No nation can be proud of being famed as a “major distributor” of foreign-made technologies – a veritable dumping ground.

Which engineering are we commercializing? Contd…

• Broadly speaking, there are two types of engineering products in Nigeria – Foreign-made and locally-made products

• Foreign-made products are those that are engineered in foreign lands and exported wholesale to end-users in Nigeria e.g. automobiles, consumer electronics, machineries etc and

• Locally-made products falls into two categories- those assembled in Nigeria through joint ventures with foreign firms and wholly indigenous products that are contrived and manufactured locally in Nigeria

• local content is the criterion for ascribing indigenous status to a product

Which engineering should we commercialize?

• Commercialization of non-indigenous (foreign) products (franchise) is a global practice by nations including developed nations, seen as a platform to brings variety into the market

• However, appropriate policies are put in place to protect national interest and assure dominance of indigenous engineering over foreign counterparts

• This is not so with Nigeria due to policy somersaults and weak market dynamics

Which engineering should we commercialize? Contd…

• Do we have indigenous engineering to commercialize?

• The search for answer will indict us as a nation and as engineers for frittering away opportunities for development of indigenous engineering.

• During the SAP era in the 1980s, in spite of the decline in manufacturing outputs, some set of entrepreneurs were emerging in some parts of eastern Nigerian where industrial clusters sprung up in places like Aba, Nnewi, Onitsha etc


• These clusters were dubbed “Taiwan of Africa” • These businessmen produced “imitation” of

established Japanese brands of automobile spare parts, motorcycle spare parts and electrical products

Their entrepreneurial sagacity was a courageous PUSH for technological self-reliance and national development which may have resulted to establishment of a middle market in Nigeria Unfortunately, NIGERIA and the cynical public welcomed

their products with scorns and derisive stings Their products were called “fake”, “Taiwan”, “imitation”


• The history of technology shows that many technology giants of today took off from the base of “imitation”, formally know as “Reverse Engineering” in learned environments. For example,

America “imitated” the Russian feat (add technology) of sending man to moon Also liberated German physicists and scientists to

“imitate” their knowledge for the famed “Manhattan Project” China “imitates” western technologies to attained her

current technological status


• The point here is that , in the context of technological development, “imitation” (Reverse engineering) is a knowledge and frontier-expanding technique that has been utilized by nations to consolidate their gains and strides

The UNDENIABLE FACT is , had Nigeria paid attention to those seeds of technological possibilities planted by those self-determined entrepreneurs by providing state support through enabling policies and incentives as possibly done to the Taiwanese, American or Chinese entrepreneurs, we could possibly be visible in the engineering tech market today


• Merely bemoaning our condition will be counterproductive.

• A pragmatic approach to salvaging what remains of our technological self as a nation is to take an INWARD LOOK at what we have on ground and anchor on them in a renewed quest for technological development that will result to commercializing our OWN technologies.

• This takes us to the last question and the main focus of this paper


• This question presupposes that there are technologies to commercialize which elicits the need to prioritize during the decision making process

• The pervading belief among Nigerians is that technology (especially of the electronics and mechanical engineering variants) has so advanced to the extent that inventions and innovations engineered by Nigerians and in Nigeria would be of no marketable value in the face of current technological realities


• This belief has fueled consumers’ preference for foreign-made electronics and mechanical products

• While it is indisputable that global technology has advanced in all its ramifications, it is worth noting that there are teeming millions of consumers whose taste could be satisfied with “homegrown” indigenous inventions and innovations

• Indigenous engineering inventions and innovations are those that have moderate or high local content and are capable of meeting the peculiar needs of an environment or persons without deference to sophistication

• There are many subsistent farmers who in spite of technological advancement and trickles of modern farming technologies into their domains, are still burdened with traditional farming methods and tools.

• For instance, in many rural communities in the North, farmers depend on traditional tools and methods to de-stone Acha (Digitaria exilis), thresh sorghum (dawa), decorticate groundnut and other cash crops


• In the Southern axis, farmers still make use of mortar and pestle to extract palm oil from kernel, stone to crack kernel shell and manual methods to separate melon.

• These farmers are searching for technologies that would ameliorate their problems without deference to sophistication

• In the light of this, we believe that marketable “HOMEGROWN” engineering innovations is the answer to their quest.

• This brings us to the central message of this paper – Packaging of indigenous inventions and innovations

Which engineering can we commercialize? Contd…

• Packaging is the technology of enclosing or protecting products. It

affects the elegance, functionality, durability, visual acceptability and marketability of products

• In the context of commercialization of indigenous inventions and innovations, packaging is a complex problem that affects our identity, choice and investment decisions.

• It has the potential of acting as a bridge over the “valley of death” between research resources and commercialization resources

• Packaging is a major reason why indigenous inventions and innovations have continued to rot away in R&D centres and educational institutions in Nigeria

• A product is either “packaged to survive” competition or “packaged to perish” due to competition

• Infact, packaging affect everything in commercialization of engineering

Packaging and commercialization of indigenous engineering in Nigeria

• To understand why packaging of indigenous inventions and innovations is especially difficult, we must look at it from various perspectives

Perspectives on packaging

Innovation

Invention

Perspectives on

packaging Marketing tool

Identification tag

Morale booster

As an integral part of the invention process Organization/linking of units/blocks to form well-defined

schematic/block /circuit diagrams is part of package

As an innovation Involves novelty and creativity Innovation is a repackaging process

As a marketing tool Transcends it core purpose of protecting Now a bait and pricing criterion Determines marketability of a product

Perspectives on packaging contd…

As an identification tag Is a barrier to diffusion of technology due to intellectual

property problem Leads to concealment of engineering

inventions/innovations Contributes to the crisis of funding (Government,

institutional, public-spirited persons etc) Makes it difficult to identify with “Made in Nigeria”

technologies (Motor Car, Plants, machineries, electronics etc) “Made in Nigeria” tag is part of packaging

Perspectives on packaging contd…

Fixation on technological indicators at the national level gives the impression that nothing technologically worthwhile is happening in Nigeria

As a result, many small and big steps at local levels of individuals and institutions are concealed through poor documentation by innovators and institutions

An entrenched culture of “design and discard” pervades Nigerian institutions

We present here some examples of marketable technologies engineered by Nigerian innovators but are left to rot away in workshops due to packaging problem

Catalogue of selected engineering innovations in Nigerian Polytechnics

Catalogue of selected engineering innovations in Nigerian Polytechnics contd…

(a) Motorized Groundnut Decorticator (b) Bean Shelling machine © Melon Shelling machine

(a) (b) (c)

We need to look INWARD within Nigeria for viable solutions For instance, the intellectual and technological

capabilities of Centres of Excellence like National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), Engineering development Institute (EDI), Power Equipment and Electrical Machinery Development Institute (PEEMADI) should be maximize to fulfill their existential mandates

Tackling the packaging challenge

1. There should be a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaboration between these centres of excellence and educational institutions. It should provide for a viable platform for transferring engineering innovations from engineering faculties to these centres for refinement of contents and better packaging standards through better manufacturing processes. Innovations

Tackling the packaging challenge contd …

2. The implemnentation of (1) necessarily require the provision of a legal framework that subsume intellectual property right and management (patents, copyright, trademarks) and dispute resolution mechanisms. These can be ably resolved by interested parties through extant laws

3. Government should strengthen the capacity and capability of these institutes and similar centres to effectively play their assigned roles in advancing engineering development through improved funding and personnel development


4. Need to expose students and engineering personnel to advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) through intensive long-term education. To this end, the curriculum of engineering schools (especially Polytechnics) should be revisited to give prominent place to AMT while concurrently equipping faculties with AMT facilities blending of theory and practice

5. Owing to the low content of AMT in the product development cycles of indigenous manufacturing firms, it is imperative for COREN and NSE to take AMT to their doorsteps through workshops and short courses for manufacturers. Eventhough a paradigm shift from traditional manufacturing to advanced manufacturing techniques will take several years of unbroken commitment to materialize, the knowledge acquired could serve as springboard to take investment risks in this technology at the appropriate time


6. COREN and NSE should collaborate with the Manufacturer Association of Nigeria (MAN) and relevant agencies including Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) to open database of enterprises whose core missions is the advancement of indigenous engineering if this has not been done already. This will assist to delineate these enterprises according to their core specialties with a view to offer appropriate incentives that will support their growth and competitiveness. These outfits are clustered in Aba, Nnewi, Onitsha, Lagos, Kaduna, Kano, Ogun, Jos etc. according to a report, there are over 33,000 middle level enterprises in US. HOW MANY DO WE HAVE IN NIGERIA?


7. Governments should create enabling environment through formulation of policies for greater private sector involvement in indigenous engineering development. GOVERNMENT ALONE CANNOT DO EVERYTHING. Sustainable policies that protect their interest and accelerate national development will spur them to take risks to fund R&D activities of their firms and also contribute to funding in other institutions.

Another way of creating “enabling environment” is patronage. As an

example, imagine a Federal ministry, state government or public-spirited persons signing an MoU with R&D centres to produce 10,000 units of motley brands of Acha de-stoning machines, groundnut decorticators and other food processing machines for distribution to rural farmers. The ensuing competition could hopefully usher in a new era of improved indigenous technologies and a continuum of marketable engineering products.


As this paper might have shown, packaging is a complex challenge in Nigeria as it constitutes a major obstacle to commercialization of indigenous engineering inventions and innovations. Despite the commercial viability of many indigenous engineering products, they have rendered unmarketable by the packaging problem. However, it is not too late for us to restrategize to conquer this challenge as we patiently revamp our industries through widespread application of AMT , change our attitudes towards locally manufactured technologies, provide enabling environment for local entrepreneurs and create a conducive atmosphere for learning AMT in schools. If we begin now, the prognosis of our technological future will be reassuring.

Conclusion

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING

engr. a. umoh mnse

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