Day: October 19, 2023

Nigeria is leading the way in Africa in health innovation and pandemic preparedness on the continent.

Dr Jean Kaseya, the Director-General of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made this known during a visit to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention(NCDC), on Wednesday at the headquarters, in Abuja.

Kaseya was accompanied by the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammed Pate.

He said that through this visit, the Africa CDC aimed to strengthen collaborations and partnerships, share expertise, and shape a healthier future for the country, region and on the continent.

He acknowledged the role played by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in choosing Pate, for its clear agenda and leadership in healthcare across the world.

He emphasised the immense responsibility that comes with being in a position of leadership in the country, stating that it not only affects the country but also the entire continent.

He highlighted the importance of regular consultations with the minister, even on matters unrelated to the country or Africa, as it was crucial to establish connections and gain support, aid, guidance, and information.

He expressed pride in the accomplishments of Nigeria’s healthcare system, including NCDC and its widespread recognition.

He commended the efforts of individuals like Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Assistant Director General of the World Health Organization, whom he referred to as an ambassador for the country, and emphasised the need for continuous collaboration and support on the continent.

He stressed the urgency of pandemic prevention and response, citing evidence of new outbreaks occurring on the continent.

He pointed out that 70 per cent of these outbreaks were zoonotic, highlighting the importance of a One Health Approach that involves multiple ministries working together.

He praised countries like Botswana for elevating the coordination mechanism on One Health to the Vice President level, suggesting that Nigeria should consider a similar approach.

Furthermore, he emphasised the need for African heroes to be celebrated and recognised.

He highlighted the discovery of the Omicron variant by an African scientist using equipment provided by African CDC.

He also praised Nigeria’s emergency operation centres and encouraged other countries to learn from Nigeria’s approach to avoid fragmentation.

He expressed support for the vision of local manufacturing and medical industrialization, emphasizing the need for Africa to be self-sufficient in meeting its healthcare needs.

He acknowledged the challenges of medical consumption and the need to develop programs that allow African countries to support one another.

He, however, expressed his commitment to return and continue supporting Nigeria’s healthcare system, emphasising the importance of Africa’s readiness for future pandemics.

He disclosed that the vision of the Africa CDC was building a resilient health system for Africa focusing on 4C’s.

“These are Community: Community involvement; Connectivity: A strong digital connectivity; Cash: Financial Resources;Commodities: Vaccines, medicines, and Diagnostics,” he explained.

The DG emphasised the importance of discussing these proxies with the Nigerian Minister of Health and highlighted how they align with its agenda in the country.

By mentioning funding, he acknowledged the need for adequate financial resources to support healthcare initiatives.

“This includes exploring domestic resources and finding ways to secure funding for health-related projects.

“The mention of commodities highlights the importance of manufacturing and producing essential healthcare products within Africa. This emphasizes the need for self-sufficiency and reducing reliance on external sources for critical medical supplies.

“The reference to communities emphasizes the significance of a strong and well-supported health workforce. This includes investing in training, capacity building, and ensuring the availability of skilled healthcare professionals.

“The mention of productivity and the digital agenda underscores the importance of leveraging technology and connectivity to enhance healthcare systems.

“This includes utilizing digital platforms for data collection, information sharing, and improving overall healthcare delivery,” he explained.

Also speaking, Pate stressed the need for coordination and collaboration in addressing outbreaks of infectious diseases.

The minister highlighted that infectious diseases respect no boundaries and can quickly spread across countries and continents.

“Therefore, working together with organizations like the Africa CDC and other development partners on the continent is crucial in keeping the continent safer during outbreaks,” he said

He also emphasised the interconnectedness of the world and the impact that outbreaks can have on national economies.

He mentions how diseases like Ebola and COVID-19 affected production, and other sectors, highlighting the broader implications of disease outbreaks beyond just human health.

The Minister stressed the importance of coordination within the government and various agencies involved in healthcare, such as the Federal Ministry of Health, the NCDC, the National Primary Health Care Department Agency, and regulatory bodies like the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).

He provided examples of successful coordination efforts, such as the task force for diphtheria and collaboration on Lassa fever technology and its vaccine preparation in the country.

Earlier, the Director General, NCDC, Dr Ifedayo Adetifa, highlighted the agency’s priorities as strengthened collaboration with other Ministries, Departments and Agencies especially to strengthen the One Health Approach in the country.

Adetifa said that strengthening health security workforce capacity and the establishment and sustained working of Public Health Emergency Operations Centres.

Amongst others, he said were optimisation of current public health laboratory services and the further expansion of the Surveillance Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System in the country.(NAN)

Source: News Agency of Nigeria

Prof. Olalekan Akinbo of the African Union Development Agency (AUDA –NEPAD), called for stronger collaboration among key players in the agricultural food chain for transfer of agri -food technologies.

He made the call in a panel discussion on how policymakers and international institutions can seize the opportunity to incentivize and support the transfer of agri-food technologies.

The event, which was held in Rome and monitored via webinar, had the theme: ”Developing and Deploying Agri-Food and Climate Tech Innovations: The Role of Technology Transfer”.

Akinbo expressed optimism that when key players in the agricultural ecosystem, including policy makers forged stronger ties in technology transfer, sustainable development goals would be achieved.

The Supervisor at the Centre of Excellence in Science, Technology and Innovation said in forging such cooperation, considering who should be the top beneficiary wasn’t important, rather, what was paramount was achieving zero hunger.

He maintained that a workable policy was also an attribute of a good ecosystem where key players come together to drive the process towards a successful attainment of set goals.

“When this is achieved, policy that is now a bottleneck would translate to food security,’’ he said.

Akinbo stressed on the need for elements of transparency in regards to policy, while re-iterating the convening mandate of the AUDA-NEPAD in bringing together member states to ensure proper policy alignment.

He recalled that putting policies in place for agriculture in order to get some commitment from member states, dated back to 2014 during the Malabo declaration where Heads of States of the African Union met.

Accordingly, he said this meeting was also in relation to Africa’s agricultural transformation and food security agenda which targeted zero hunger.

He argued that innovation components were working in member states, citing traditional research carried out in genome editing as an example, categorizing the technology as one that speaks to the needs of the people.

However, he insisted on the imperative of industries appreciating the technology to make it workable, while stressing, ”if industries fail to see the benefits in spite of the huge investments, it may fail to work.”

Akinbo also enumerated how policy makers could help scale up to the next stage.

“Innovation isn’t innovation until it is scalable,” he said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that in Africa, access to improved technologies and innovations across the entire food systems value chain remains slow.

As a result of this, Africa’s agricultural and food industry becomes uncompetitive in the global markets.

NAN also reports that adoption of technologies in Africa stands a little above 35 per cent and still far less than the potential.

The organisers of the panel discussion event stated that in recent decades, the global challenges related to food insecurity and the impact of climate change have grown increasingly urgent.

This compelled organizations, scientists, and innovators to develop revolutionary solutions in the form of agri-tech and climate-smart innovations.

Delgermaa Chuluunbaater, Agricultural Research Officer, FAO, questioned why there should be lack of adoption of agri-technologies and lack of investment in research android development.

She said the concept had been promoted from five to ten years ago and was successfully tested in different countries.

Daniel Adeniyi, Policy Officer, Sustainable Food Systems, European Centre for Development and Policy Management, said tech transfer was a controversial issue, adding that there was not enough commitment.

He corroborated Akinbo by urging for stronger ties, and concrete actions while stating that businesses should also take care of tech transfer by helping to set the agenda.

Gladys Morales, Senior Officer Global/Head of Innovation, Change, Delivery and Innovation Unit, IFAD, another panelist, spoke about scaling up which she said was also about financing.

Morales said the concept of capacity sharing and building was very relevant and the focus should be on improving the lives of rural people who were less likely to use mobile internet.

Marie Brueser, Corporate Venture Manager, European Institute of Innovation and Technology (ETI)Food, said start-ups needed agri-tech transfer and putting facilities in place was a necessity, while also hinting on connectivity and capacity sharing.

Akinbo, Chuluunbaatar, Adeniyi,Morales, Brueser and Francesco Rampa who made up the second panel, agreed that policies should target key actors.

They said this was a prerequisite to avoid funds ending up in wrong hands.

The panelists also saw need to scale up start -ups among other ideas brought to the table.

The discussion consisted of two panels; the first panelists discussed how technology transfer can unlock the potential for impact of early stage agri-food innovation.

Both panels, among other summations, stressed on the importance of collaborations and networks.

The event was hosted by Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT of CGIAR and Co-organized by ECDPM, LVenture Group, and CGIAR Accelerate for Impact Platform. (NAN) (www.nannews.ng)

Source: News Agency of Nigeria

Hon. Abubakar Fulata, Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on University Education has called for salary increment for primary, secondary and university teachers.

The chairman said the teachers should earn N250,000, N500,000 and N1 million respectively as monthly renumeration.

Fulata was speaking at a One-Day National Stakeholders’ Workshop on the Development of a Roadmap for the Nigerian Education Sector (2023-2027), in Abuja on Thursday.

Fulata said that it is important for Nigerian teachers to be more encouraged by paying them adequately to teach the children.

He also stressed the need to translate all subject textbooks into local languages so as to catch up with the world.

According to him, efforts have been made by past administrations as regards the country’s education but those efforts had not yielded the desired results.

“It is a thing of concern that from decades, several efforts on policies made by successive government to resuscitate and improve the education sector and those efforts have continued to create very little progress.

“All over the world, the subject of language of instruction has always been local language of those countries. If you go to the UK, education is taught in English, if you go to France, education from the basic level up to the tertiary level is taught in French.

“It is in Nigeria that you teach language of instruction in English. Our problem has always been that we are teaching our children subjects they ought to have been taught in their local language.

“All Mathematical, Physics, Chemistry textbook and what have you should be in our local languages. There is no way we can catch up with the world if we continue teaching our children in a foreign language.

“No primary school teacher should earn less than N250,000 in a month, no secondary school teacher should earn less than N500,000 and no university teacher should warn less than 1million in a month.

“The nation must declare a state of emergency in education. We must commit at least 25 per cent to 30 per cent of our national budget to education.

“It is high time we pay them adequately so that them can teach our children,” he said.

The Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, said that the ministry has great policies on papers but they are not meeting the needs of the people.

Mamman explained that the country’s education does not translate to the needs of the society, hence the need to critically have a roadmap that would translate to development.

He added that those roadmaps must however be implemented within the shortest timeline.

“President Bola Tinubu has charged the ministry to do all it can to reposition the sector.

” We have problems that has been militating the visions, missions and objectives on ground. We have great and fantastic policies but the issue is that our people are not seeing our problems addressed.

“We have institutions churning out graduates who are not employable and we cannot go on like this forever.

“So, in line with our President’s mandate, we must have a roadmap to guide the implementation of how to take the sector forward.

” The idea of the conference is to have a whole lot of time for implementation of our policies,” he said.

He charged participants to work within limited time so that Nigerians could begin to feel the impacts of the policies made within the timelines.

He pledged to engage state governments on the ministry’s crusade to move the sector forward.

In the same vein, the Minister of State for Education, Dr Yusuf Sununu, emphasised the need to recognise gender mainstreaming in the roadmap so that Nigeria will have the benefit of a balanced education system.

“Education, you would all agree is one sector of development that Nigerians have been known to speak with one voice in terms of its importance to development.

“However, this recognition of its importance is yet to translate to tangible results that show that an educated person stands a better chance of living a fulfilled life.

“This disconnect, between purpose and reality, could be said to be responsible for inadequate attention to the sector, wrong perceptions of the relative importance of the different forms and types of education.

“Indeed, I must also say that the inability of our youths to gain employment after going through the rigors of academic may be responsible for a gradually building dis-interest in the pursuit of education,” he said.

Sununu, however, said this trend must be curtailed to make Nigerian education responsive to every day realities and beneficial to the individual as well as the nation. (NAN)(www nannews.ng)

Source: News Agency of Nigeria