Gilbert Ekugbe
The Additive Manufacturing Group (AMG), University of Lagos and the Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC) has issued a communique of the first bi-local international conference on Additive Manufacturing (AM) in Nigeria, which highlights the need for Nigeria to embrace AM in its quest to achieve rapid industrial growth
The communique, which was publicly presented at the RMRDC House in Lekki area of Lagos, iterated the use of AM processes and the potential of AM to significantly reduce the time and cost involved in tool production, saying that the necessary know-how is developed in case studies and passed to Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs) within the framework of technology transfer.
“All SMEs can significantly increase their competitiveness and achieve sustainable business success by using additive manufacturing technology,” it said.
According to the communique, AM offers huge opportunities for rapid industrialisation of Nigeria in view of its innumerable potentials that can enable the country to leapfrog into the 4th Industrial revolution, stressing that AM can help solve increasing youth restiveness across the country due to its unique potentials for youth empowerment and wealth creation in recognition of its wide applications across all the manufacturing sectors.
“AM is a relatively new technology and therefore requires concerted efforts from both the public and private sectors of the economy in order to drive and sustain it to acceptable scale in the industrial and academic sectors,” the communique urged.
The communique placed RMRDC by virtue of its mandate, to serve as the launchpad to help propagate the potentials of AM amongst the stakeholders, especially in the Organised Private Sector of the nation’s economy the need for cooperation by the government, industry and academia in order to create proper educational roadmaps for indigenisation of AM technology. It pointed out that it is necessary to place much emphasis on train-the-trainers’ workshops with the aim of ensuring transferable skills acquistion as against theoretical approaches.
The communique resolved that there is a need for an Inventory of all AM technology practitioners and agencies in Nigeria, including academia working within the space, create awareness campaign across board with a view to showcasing the potentials in AM through design competitions and selective hands-on workshops and increased cooperation amongst government, industry and academia for the purpose of harnessing the gains inherent in AM to develop manufacturing in Nigeria.
