The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) said it would now be devoting a lot of its resources into research and promoting linkages and collaborations with both local and international bodies.
The organisation said it believes the academia should be the hub where ideas are curated and developed to ensure it is made into products and services that would help create jobs and solve societal problems.
Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono, said this in Abuja at the Strengthening the National Research and Innovation Funding Agencies in West Africa (SRIFA) focused group discussion, funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the African Technology Policy Studies (ATPS).
He said, “Tetfund as we know is the leading finance agency for research in this country. One key strategy we hope to accomplish is to create an effective linkage with industries; we believe the academia should be the hub where ideas are curated and developed to ensure it is made into products and services that would help create jobs and solve societal problems and through innovation create new ways of growing our economy.
“That is why we are devoting a lot of our resources now on research and promoting linkages and collaborations with both local and international bodies.
“Currently we operate a committee system because we have two broad categories of research that we fund. We fund institutional based researches that are domiciled in our institutions; they use their usual internal processes for carrying that about but we also have a national research fund which has several thematic areas that we encourage and receive proposals as well as issue grants for.
“We rely on experts from various fields in the committee that we set up to receive, evaluate and recommend the proposal for funding and monitor implementations to ensure that results are achieved at the end of the day.”
