The Tertiary Education Trust Fund’s efforts to win significant international research grants for Nigerian scholars have been significantly enhanced by the commitment of the European Union to offer 440,000 euros.
This funding will be allocated to support research teams in Nigeria that have been shortlisted under the Horizon Europe Project.
According to a statement released in Abuja on Friday, the leader of TETFund’s team for the Horizon Europe programme, Tope Toogun, informed Sunny Echono, the Executive Secretary of TETFund, about the current initiatives being undertaken to facilitate the involvement of Nigerian researchers in the internationally acclaimed research project.
He expressed regret at the limited participation of Nigerian researchers in securing financing for the EU Horizon project, despite the abundance of human resources inside the country.
“It is embarrassing that Nigeria with all our intellectual capital, cannot participate in Horizon. The EU works in terms of a seven-year framework, the current one is Horizon Europe, the previous framework was called Horizon 2020 and it ran from 2013 to 2020.
“Africa got about 350 projects, out of which South Africa alone cornered 146, Egypt and Morocco got between 50 and 70, and Kenya got 46, Nigeria was not on the radar. It doesn’t mean we have not been participating, we have been on the sideline,” he said.
One of the major barriers preventing Nigerian researchers from receiving the grants, according to Toogun, who briefed the TETFund’s boss alongside team member Ayo Ajayi, was their inability to organise and prepare for the Horizon project. For this reason, the TETFund decided to create the team in order to overcome all of these obstacles.
The TETFund’s Executive Secretary stated that the organisation is totally committed to making sure Nigerian researchers are competitive in the international arena and that the Fund is also aiming to garner funding for scholars in the nation from other international research agencies.
