Access to Modern Technology: Smart Partnerships for Research and Practice

Several studies carried out in Sub-Saharan Africa have pointed to the perennial and persistent shortage of skills, let alone the access to modern equipment and technology by engineering academics, resulting in the compromised quality of engineering graduates and mismatch of skills required by industry and those that tertiary institutions produced. This has been largely due to the lack of capacity by the institutions to replenish old and conventional equipment. Through several projects instituted in the region since the new millennium, supported by various aid agencies, a situational analysis and research was carried, leading to the development of the smart procurement, use and maintenance model in the form of strategic partnerships with industry. This chapter focusses on the development of this model as one of the feeders to the universal model for bridging the gap between industry and academia for academics’ ready access to modern and relevant technology in industry to enable them to produce quality and employable graduate engineers.