reportgov
reportgov

Thursday November 21, 2024

Research & Development

The Research and Development (R&D) activities of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) involve conducting and supporting cutting edge research into emerging technologies that promote the better understanding of trends in the Telecommunications industry, and provide information/data to support the development of necessary strategies, standards and guidelines, and championing telecommunications-based innovations that provide life changing solutions to societal challenges.

To this end, the R&D Department of the NCC provides grants to support research by leading academics and researchers from Nigerian tertiary institutions, and holds regular competitions e.g. "Hackathons" open to technology hubs and Innovation Driven Enterprises (IDE) to stimulate innovation and development in the telecommunications and digital economy sector in Nigeria.

Click here for the List of Telecommunications Based Research Projects

Click here for the List of Professorial Chairs

Click here for the List of Consultancy Studies

Click here for the List of Competition Winners

 

 

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is mandated to encourage effective research and development efforts by the Academia and other practitioners in the communications’ industry, with the goal of building the indigenous capacity of manufacturers and improving the overall supply chain, within the Nigerian economy.

Consequently, and as part of the Commission’s objective of entrenching telecommunications-based innovations in sustaining growth of the Industry and enhancing the contribution of the Sector to national development, the Commission is instituting a Research Fellowship Programme in 2020. This Programme will advance the Academia – Telecommunications Industry Partnership through collaborative work on providing solutions to issues of emerging technologies and other Industry challenges.

Download the following document at the link below to read more about the NCC Research Fellowship Programme.

One disruptive technology that is changing the way the world operates is Artificial Intelligence (AI). As the science and advancement of AI develops, smart technologies are increasingly being deployed and will have profound ethical, psychological, social, economic, and legal consequences for human society and our planet. Artificial autonomous agents are simply the next stage in the development of technology.

Autonomous agents perceive, decide, and act on their own. In summary, autonomous agents behave as humans. This is a radical, qualitative change in our technology and in our image of technology. This raises concerns ofthe fact that AI agents could in the future, take unwanted actions that result in dire consequences.

Due to the constant development and wide deployment of AI technology (in areas such as healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, agriculture, Smart Cities amongst others) in the ICT sector, AI continuously undergoes change cycles that result in new emerging ethical, social and legal issues.

This has already initiated the transformation of our societies, and the emergence of ethical, legal and social challenges leading to a collective debate on the potential positive and negative impact of AI, and if we can indeed allow these systems to occupy human roles.

Hence, this paper, sponsored by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), aims to dissect AI, its impact on society and the ethical considerations concerning its wide deployment by focusing on the following research questions:

  1. How does AI impact the society?
  2. What are the ethical considerations related to AI?
  3. Can AI be regulated? If so, how?

 Download:   pdf Ethical and Societal Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) (596 KB)

Please find below the proposals submitted for the COVID-19 Virtual Hackathon, divided into the various categories;

 

Please find below the proposals submitted for the Emerging Technologies Competition 2019;

 

Page 3 of 3