E-Business
TETFund Develops Software to Track Expenditures
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, said it has developed a project impact tracking system to evaluate the correlation of its spending on research and results so far achieved.
Prof. Suleiman Bogoro, the Executive Secretary of TETFund, who disclosed this, also expressed optimism that the annual allocation to the National Research Fund, NRF, will hit N10 billion in 2022.
“We realised that we need to know the impact of our research and so we have worked on and concluding a process of software that will help us to evaluate the impact of the research grants, so that we are not just throwing money on research exercise but we need to evaluate the impact, ” he said.
He spoke at a virtual meeting on ‘Democratization of Higher Education in Nigeria through Open Access,’ co-hosted by TETFund and the Training Centre in Communication, Nairobi, as part of activities to mark International Open Access Week.
According to him, the agency’s Board of Trustees had recently approved N8.5 billion as 2021 allocation for NRF.
Bogoro said following the agency’s proposal, the Board of Trustees’ had in 2019 graciously approved N5 billion for NRF, which was raised to N7.5 billion in 2020 and N8.5 billion in 2021.
His words : “Over the last two and half years now, we have raised funds available for research. They are two categories; institution based and National Research Fund.
“The institution based has a ceiling of about may be N3,600 US dollars and it is for mainly basic research while the higher ceiling grant of about 92 or 93 US dollars is the National Research Fund aimed at promoting applied research, and to that extent, in 2019 I made case to the Board of Trustees of TETFund to increase the threshold.
”It used to be a kind of seed money. Seed money of N4 billion for eight years but from the year 2019 to last year and this year, we increased it to N5 billion annually. Last year we increased it from N5 billion to N7.5 billion and this year it is N8.5 billion and we are hoping in 2022 it will move to N10 billion.
He said NRF is one of the major platforms put in place by the government through TETFund to support the academic community in research to achieve specific objectives, particularly in the area of science, technology and innovation.
While expressing the readiness of TETFund to always mainstream open access/science through massive support for Research and Development (R&D), Bogoro said the Fund had recently established 12 Centres of Excellence across the country.
He said the move was aimed at supporting cutting-edge research mainly in universities so as to provide solutions to various problems bedeviling the society as well as position Nigeria as a major player in the knowledge economy.
“We are increasing emphasis on Science, Technology and Innovation to solve societal problems,” Bogoro said, even as he said democratisation of higher education in Nigeria would improve more access to research and its supportive platforms to the schools and the society.
Also speaking at the webinar, the Technical Adviser to the TETFund’s Executive Secretary, Dr Popoola Mustapha Ayodele, harped on the decolonisation of education research and technology in Africa.
“Our educational system is still colonised, we must do away with old traditions and adopt new paradigms…., the traditional practice of closed systems should be done away with,” Popoola said.
Popoola, who spoke on ‘Democratisation of Higher Education in Nigeria, Open Access Landscape and TETFund’s Intervention for Open Science Adoption,” said the agency is leaving no stone unturned to revolutionise R&D in the country to benefit all.
While saying TETFund’s intervention lines on open science include the establishment of 12 Centres of Excellence in universities, Popoola said the agency will soon establish the second set of 12 centres to be shared equally among polytechnics and colleges of education.
On his part, the Director of Distance, Open and eLearning of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Odedina Kayode, lamented the problem of access in the Nigerian university system both in terms of materials and admission of students.
Odedina said while there are 201 universities in the country, only about 30 per cent from over a million candidates that apply for admission every year scale through the hurdles.
He, however, restated NUC’s commitment to take steps that will usher in easy access to materials and open learning to boost research output in the country.
Mr Daryl Naylor of Digital Science, who also spoke at the event, assured of the readiness of his organisation to always support open access initiatives in Africa.
E-Business
Cyber Resilience a Critical Priority for Manufacturing Amid Rapid Digitalization – Report Shows
As 60% of manufacturers race toward full digitalisation, cyber risk is increasingly manifesting as a business risk, according to a new global report by Kaspersky and VDC Strategy.
This means cybersecurity is not merely a compliance function, it is a cornerstone of production assurance, safeguarding uptime, quality, and operational continuity.
Manufacturers are modernising to deliver safer, more consistent and more cost-effective production and digitalization is moving fast: just 9% of organisations describe themselves as fully digital today, but 60% expect to get there within two years, according to the joint report by Kaspersky and VDC, titled ‘Cyber Resilience, Built for Manufacturing’.
That shift links shop-floor equipment, production lines and site operations to platforms such as Manufacturing execution systems (MES), Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and historians, turning many plants into cyber-physical systems (CPS), where a digital disruption doesn’t stay digital. It can slow production lines, quarantine work in progress, invalidate traceability records, or halt production outright.
What’s driving manufacturing digitalization?
Manufacturers are digitising for measurable operational gains, not novelty. Survey respondents identified the primary drivers of their digital transformation strategy as:
- Improving production output or efficiency (24%)
- Reducing operational or production expenses (15%)
- Enabling new strategic opportunities (14%)
- Improving cyber resilience (13%)
The same connected systems that unlock these gains, including MES, IIoT sensors, automated material handling, remote engineering access, also become the systems that determine whether production can be trusted to keep running.
Cyber risk is now a business risk
Cyber risk has evolved from a mere IT concern to a direct threat to revenue generation, as environments transform into cyber-physical systems. In these integrated settings, digital disruptions like malware no longer just affect data, they can cause unsafe operations, scrapped batches, and halted production on the plant floor. This shift highlights the urgent need to treat cybersecurity as a key part of operational resilience.
According to the report, nearly 60% of manufacturing organisations estimate that cyber incidents cause damages exceeding $1 million per event, with an average disruption of 15.3 hours. The most significant losses often result from production halts, missed delivery commitments, and penalties, rather than just forensic costs.
In this context, downtime links cybersecurity risks to overall business performance. Cyber incidents can reduce Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), strain staffing, and disrupt supply chains. Recovery involves more than system restore, it requires re-establishing confidence in process parameters, quality records, and traceability before resuming operations.
Mature cybersecurity programs now incorporate OT security into governance, focusing on metrics valued by production leaders such as time to restore, backup confidence, legacy asset coverage, and safe degraded operation. This alignment ensures cybersecurity supports continuous production and resilience, not just IT compliance.
However, challenges remain due to split ownership. While 59% of organisations’ IT departments manage security policies, these often overlook plant realities. Managing many security tools (44%) and OT patching issues (38%) show that cybersecurity must be embedded into daily routines of production, engineering, and quality teams. Only through such integration can cybersecurity effectively enhance operational reliability and defend against evolving threats.
“As manufacturing environments become increasingly interconnected, cybersecurity shifts focus from merely adding protective layers to ensuring the availability, resilience, and integrity of production processes. The goal is to minimise operational impact and speed up recovery, rather than solely preventing intrusions.
“Kaspersky offers a unified ecosystem that integrates IT, OT, and IIoT security, empowering manufacturers to pursue digital transformation securely. This strategy helps maintain operational continuity and reduces long-term cybersecurity costs,” comments Andrey Strelkov, Head of Industrial Cybersecurity Product Line at Kaspersky.
To implement this strategy, manufacturing companies can leverage solutions from the Kaspersky OT Cybersecurity Ecosystem, centered around Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity (KICS), a native Extended Detection and Response platform designed for critical infrastructure protection. KICS enables centralised detection and response to complex attacks across the entire industrial network, ensuring comprehensive visibility and security.
Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has commenced a forensic investigation into the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Lotus Bank and Hackerbella Ltd over alleged violations of data protection laws involving students’ personal information.
The investigation follows public complaints alleging that students’ personal data were used to open bank accounts without a lawful basis.
Dr Vincent Olatunji, national commissioner and chief executive officer of the NDPC, directed the investigation team to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the circumstances surrounding the collection, processing, use and disclosure of the affected students’ personal data.
The investigation will also determine the respective roles and responsibilities of UNILAG, Lotus Bank and Hackerbella in the alleged processing of the data.
According to the Commission, the investigation will assess the data protection compliance obligations of the parties under the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023 (NDP Act), as well as potential risks posed to the rights and freedoms of the affected data subjects.
The NDPC said the probe would cover several areas, including Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs), the lawfulness and transparency of credit scoring or profiling activities, and the use of automated decision-making systems.
It will also examine the adequacy of privacy notices, data-sharing arrangements, lawful bases for processing, data minimisation and purpose limitation.
Other areas include data retention policies and the adequacy of technical and organisational measures put in place to safeguard the rights and personal data of affected students.
The Commission reiterated that institutions entrusted with the personal data of students, staff and other members of their communities have a heightened responsibility to ensure that such information is processed lawfully, fairly, transparently and securely.
The NDPC therefore warned educational institutions that are yet to comply with its existing data protection compliance directives to take immediate steps to achieve compliance.
The Commission said it would continue to exercise its regulatory mandate to protect the privacy rights of Nigerians and ensure that organisations processing personal data comply with the provisions of the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023.
Microsoft is planning to unveil its new Maia 300 AI chip this fall, potentially as soon as next month, The Information reported on Monday, citing people with direct knowledge of the plans.
The company introduced its Maia AI chip in November 2023 but has lagged rivals such as Alphabet and Amazon in scaling up its in-house chip efforts as it seeks to reduce its reliance on Nvidia’s costly processors.
Google began recognizing revenue from direct sales of its custom AI chips, called Tensor Processing Units, in the quarter ended June, while Amazon has also seen growing adoption of its processors, including its Trainium chips.
Microsoft has been in talks with chipmaker TSMC to secure manufacturing capacity for more than 300,000 units of the chip for delivery in 2027, according to the report. It is also looking to significantly ramp up production and persuade major cloud customers such as Anthropic to adopt the chip.
Microsoft ultimately aims to secure capacity for more than 1 million Maia 300 chips, though component supplies and ongoing capacity negotiations with TSMC could constrain its plans, according to the report.
It unveiled its second-generation Maia 200 in January, built by TSMC using 3-nanometer technology.
Microsoft packed the chip with a significant amount of SRAM, a type of memory that can provide speed advantages for AI systems handling large numbers of user requests.
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