10 Nigerian Universities win N12.2bn in world bank's ACE student project

Nigerian universities have N12.2 billion in the kitty after ruling West and Central Africa in World Bank-sponsored ACE competition

Ten Nigerian universities have won $80 million (about N12.2 billion) research grants in the just concluded competition for African Centres of Excellence (ACE) Project.

Only 19 of the over 52 proposals submitted by participating higher education institutions in the West and Central African sub-regions were awarded the World Bank grants.

Interestingly, 10 of the 19 proposals successful after the screening processes were submitted by Nigerian universities.

The Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Julius Okojie, the 19 centres were selected on the basis of merit and transparency and expressed optimism that the success of the project would make a significant contribution to the development of Africa.

"Your collective efforts will go a long way to make Africa self-reliant, a world destination and economic powerhouse.

"I would like to appeal to everyone in this project that though there are many challenges common to us in the African continent, it is going to take us to fix them," Okojie said.

The ACE project offers African universities opportunity to improve on agriculture, health, science and technology through research and  each centre is eligible to receive funds up to $8 million.

Nigeria's 10 universities will now get about $80 million (N12.2 billion) for their research.

Supervising Minister of Education, Mr Nyesom Wike, urged the winning institutions to ensure they see the projects through to their full implementation.

The winning institutions include: Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta for Agricultural Development and Sustainable Environment; Bayero University, Nigeria, for Dryland Agriculture, and Benue State University, Nigeria, for Food Technology and Research, Redeemer's University, Nigeria, for Genomics of Infectious Diseases; University of Jos, Nigeria, for Phytomedicine Research and Development; Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria, for Neglected Tropical Diseases and Forensic Biotechnology; University of Benin, Nigeria, for Reproductive Health and Innovation; African University of Science and Technology, Nigeria, for Materials; University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, for Oil Field Chemicals and Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, for Science, Technology and Knowledge.