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Raphael Ede, Enugu
The National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP), has said it saved the country over N240 billion in the last ten years that would have gone out as capital flight.
The agency, saddled with the responsibility of regulating the inflow of foreign technology into the country through the registration of technology transfer agreements, encourage the efficient adaptation, assimilation and domestication of foreign technologies, said the savings were achieved through refusal to approve the importation of technologies and services that could be rendered by Nigerians.
The Director General of NOTAP, Dr. DanAzumi Mohammed Ibrahim, who stated this in Enugu while presenting the agency’s scorecard at the just concluded 2019 Technology and Innovation Expo, tagged “Science, Technology and Innovation for Economic Recovery and Sustainable Development”, revealed that often time when Nigerian entrepreneurs enter into technology transfer agreement with their foreign counterparts, the agreements are drafted in such a way that indigenous technologists/service providers do not benefit, rather expatriates will be deployed to execute jobs that Nigerians are competent enough to handle.
“Through NOTAP’s interventions, such agreements are not approved unless redrafted to take care of indigenous technologists/skills”. Dr. Ibrahim said the measure was to ensure the acceleration of Nigerian’s bid towards technological revolution through an efficient assimilation and absorption of foreign technology and concerted efforts geared towards the development of indigenous skills.
He further revealed that NOTAP evaluates technology transfer agreement in three perspectives, legal, economic and technical perspectives. He added that in legal perspective, the office ensures that the provisions of the agreements are in tandem with the laws of the land and does not in any form, contain unwarranted and restrictive clauses.
The economic perspective is considered to ensure that the services being retendered are commensurate with the fees payable while the technical consideration is to ensure that the agreement has provision for capacity building and knowledge transfer.
