By Oluwakemi Oladipo
Lagos – The Vice-Chancellor, Lagos State University (LASU), Ojo, Prof. Olarenwaju Fagbohun, has called on the Nigeria Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to start developing technologies to address their challenges.
Fagbohun spoke at a business roundtable and paper presentations organised by the Lagos State University Masters of Business Administration (LASUMBA) on Thursday.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that theme of the programme was: “Capacity Building as a Nerve Centre of Development”.
“From developed countries, we always bring in technologies for our own use, because we do not have the capacity to produce these technologies for ourselves, but we need to start creating ideas on technology.
“Few days ago, I was in Ottawa to deliver a lecture on climate change, and I mentioned the issue of capacity building.
“One of the issues I raised was that transfer of technology can never work, and we must start talking of co-creation of technology.
“Nigerians can collaborate with them to develop our technologies, because we all have to be aware of the capacity development and not remain only consumers,” Fagbohun said.
He said that Nigeria would not go anywhere, unless we urgently address the issue of capacity building.
“Capacity building should focus on how we can co-create technology and develop our own solutions.
“LASU is constructing a technology incubation centre, our students will work there and come up with solutions.
“One of the things we are doing as an institution is to ensure that people respect LASU; again, that is why we are engaging with other institutions for good capacity development,” Fagbohun said.
Also, Dr Olateju Ibrahim, the Coordinator of LASUMBA, said that the MBA Programme had created a platform for the provision of human capital for business in Nigeria and the world at large.
Ibrahim said that they came up with this topic because there was need for them to make a positive noise about the MBA and how capacity building could help to develop the country.
In his remarks, Mr Ekeno Eyo, Chief Operating Officer, Noah’s Ark Communications Ltd., said that capacity building would allow organisations to perform at greater capacity in terms of scale, audience and impact.
Eyo said that marketing and brand communications were the vehicles being used to propagate the offerings of brand capacity to reach more audiences, grow revenue and impact their communities positively. (NAN)