DELT-Her project: NASENI awards N70.5 million in grants to six female engineers 

The National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), through the Presidential Implementation Committee on Technology Transfer (PICTT), has awarded a N70.5 million grant to six female engineers.

NASENI’s Director of Information, Olusegun Ayeoyenikan, disclosed this in a statement released on Wednesday.

The grants were given under the Developing Engineering Leaders Through Her (DELT-Her) project, a key component of NASENI’s Delta-2 program.

This initiative is part of the agency’s efforts to empower women in traditionally male-dominated fields like engineering and technology.

The project 

The DELT-Her project, introduced on March 8, 2024, aims to address gender imbalance in the engineering and tech sectors in Nigeria.

Speaking on behalf of NASENI’s Executive Vice-Chairman, Khalil Halilu, the Coordinating Director of the Planning and Business Development Directorate, Dr. Nonyem Onyechi, highlighted the project’s goal of equipping women with the necessary tools and support to excel in these fields.

“Providing opportunities for women in engineering and technology is essential to fostering innovation. I encourage the grant recipients to see their success as an inspiration for others and to contribute to an environment where women can thrive,” Halilu said.

• Chairman of PICTT, Dr. Mohammed Dahiru, noted that the agency received over 120 applications for the DELT-Her project.

• According to him, following a rigorous selection process, six innovative projects were chosen for funding, with each recipient benefiting from grants, technical support, and connections to partners for project commercialization.

• Dahiru also revealed that some recipients had been invited to present their projects at the AFRI Lab Annual Gathering in Cape Town, South Africa.

The grant recipients and their projects 

The recipients of the NASENI grants include Rukkaya Abdulmutalib, who presented a project on  Artificial Intelligence Censored Machine to Monitor Soil Health for Green-Houses. She received N3 million.

• Patience Ibrahim-Janda, who received N10 million grants delivered a project on Automobile Brake Pads produced from Organic Waste.

• With the development of drone for intelligent real-time security and target tracking, Amina Khaleel received N17.5 million in grants.

• Similarly, Kudirat Jimoh, who produced an  electronic training board/device for science and engineering students got  N16.5 million.

• Ikechukwu Francisca came up with  automatic bambara flour processing machine and received N8.5 million.

• Abisola Olayiwola, who developed a solar-powered snail shelling machine also received N15 million in grants.

What you should know 

Announcing the launch of the initiative earlier in March this year, the Executive Vice-Chairman of NASENI said the DELT-Her sought to correct the imbalance in practice and enterprise development, by focusing attention and funding on young women, and very importantly, creating and cultivating public awareness around the need to train and mentor more women into the engineering professions.

According to him, ideally, women should make up half of all professional spaces in the country but, for now, this is far from reality.

He noted that while the global average for female representation in engineering is 28%, it is only 5% in Nigeria and only one in 20 Nigerian engineers is a woman.