21st May, 2018
European Union (EU) is partnering with the National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP) to explore satellite technology to advance development in the country.
Mr Solomon Nshem, NOTAP’s Head of Media, said in a statement on Monday in Abuja that this was disclosed when a delegation from EU visited NOTAB.
Augusto Gonzalez, Adviser, EU Satellite Navigation Programmes of the European Commission (EC), who led the delegation came in the company of Dominic Hayes, the Signals and Frequency Manager and Ibi Ikpoki, the Economic Officer of EU.
Gonzalez said they were in Nigeria to partner and exchange experiences on market development opportunities to grow their global programme; the Galileo and Egnos Satellite navigational signals.
He revealed that the satellites could be deployed to enhance safety in terms of disasters and emergencies as well as enhance industrial development.
“Satellites like the Galileo could be deployed for e-call technology which can automatically trigger to call for attention in case of an accident or emergency and the distressed car or vessel located within 10 minutes,’’ Gonzalez said.
He said that the technology had a high accuracy service, which would also be useful for the proposed self-driving vehicle revolution, Smartphone GPS and precision agriculture among others.
“The EU has identified Nigeria as an important nation in Africa and seeks to market Galileo and Egnos, which are a constellation of 22 satellites in space that Nigeria can take advantage of as it is available to the general public free of charge and provides improved global positioning.’’
In his response, the Director General of NOTAP Dr DanAzumi Ibrahim expressed appreciation to the visiting delegation for identifying with the commission.
Ibrahim said NOTAP as a technology transfer regulator was mandated to register all foreign technology transfer agreements effecting Nigeria.
He assured the agency of its willingness to partner with any organisation as long as it was mutually beneficial to both parties.
Ibrahim said NOTAP also had the mandate to promote and encourage development of creative and inventive skills among Nigerian scientists, researchers, inventors and innovators.
“As part of mandate to train Nigerian scientists, researchers inventors, we at NOTAP envisage other areas of partnership which include training of Nigerians in space technology and study tours to the EU space center,’’ he said.
NAN reports that space technology is a technology developed by space science or the aerospace industry for use in spaceflight, satellites and exploration.
It is used for many common everyday services such as weather forecasting remote sensing, GPS systems, satellite television, and some long distance communications systems, which critically rely on space infrastructure.
On the other hand, satellites are usually semi-independent computer-controlled systems which are used for many purposes.
The common types of satellite include military and civilian earth observation satellites, communications satellites, navigation satellites, weather satellites.