This week Makerere University students exhibited their
innovations, new products or services they have developed to solve our
society’s problems.
The KIIRA EV battery driven vehicle often takes center stage
at such events but there were other exhibits with potentially more widespread
use and far reaching implications such as the malaria testing kit, rain water
harvesting technology and mobile antenatal care to name but a few. About 200
innovations were on display.
I imagine our universities have always been involved in
innovations of one sort or another but I suspect not only are these innovations
getting more publicity but also that there is actually more innovation going
on.
This is great because universities beyond imparting
knowledge should be in the business of increasing the stock of knowledge in
society through research and innovation. They should be inquiring into and
solving the local challenges of the day.
It is unrealistic to expect for example that the US will
treat the search for a malarial vaccine or banana wilt disease or Nagana fever,
with as much urgency as us who face them daily. The better able we are to
resolve our own issues the better for everybody.
However our universities need to focus on their core
competencies and not get carried away by their successes.
A case in point are these plans to the take the KIIRA EV and
the other spin off into commercial production.
It is one thing to produce a prototype of a car and a whole
different thing mass producing it on a commercially sustainable basis.
Ask the Kenyans. In 1986 former President Daniel arap Moi
commissioned the University of Nairobi to develop a car, which they did. It
even managed a speed of 120 kph. The project was shelved when the initial
euphoria had died down and the government realised it could not afford to mass
produce the car.
More recently Indian manufacturers Tata in 2008 launched the
Nano car, the cheapest new car on the market at $1,700. But it has fallen far
short of expectations since, selling 7000 units annually compared to
anticipated 250,000.
The point is not that the KIIRA EV is bound to fail, it’s
that Makerere University is not suited to make a commercial success of the
venture. What is likely to happen is that government will pump hundreds of
billions of shillings to mass produce, market and subsidise the loss making
company for years into the future before the project is folded.
I would love to be wrong, spectacularly wrong on this one
but the evidence doesn’t support a happy ending to this tale.
Makerere and other universities have a huge role to play in
producing useful prototypes that can eventually be taken into commercial
production by the private sector.
They will be best served if they adopt the model of Stanford
University, the epicentre of the wildly successful Silicon Valley in the
US. Stanford provides the facilities and
personnel to do ground breaking research into high technology on its campuses, then
often licenses out its patents and once in a while takes out an equity stake in
companies that are built around these inventions.
And its not for lack of funds that Stanford adopts this
model, the university has an endowment fund worth $18b or the size of the whole
Ugandan economy, at its disposal.
This model has ensured it retains its valuable resources for
furthering research and innovation, while ensuring that the companies start
with a commercial orientation that ensures their long term success.
It’s the stuff of folklore how companies in Silicon Valley
begin in their promoters’ garages – Hewlett Packard, Apple and Facebook to name
a few. That’s how startups are built: on shoe string budgets, minimising risk
and ironing the kinks before they eventually scale up and take over the world.
The huge financial out lay and desire to go into mass
production immediately is a red flag that does not bode well for the project.
But again I hope I am wrong.
