LabEquipment NG

About LabEquipment NG

Nigeria doesn't have an equipment shortage. It has a visibility shortage.

500+

tertiary & research institutions

20M+

researchers nationwide

1

missing link: a shared directory

The challenge

Nigeria is home to over 500 public and private universities, polytechnics, and specialized research institutions — owning equipment ranging from basic science tools to sophisticated analytical instrumentation capable of producing ground-breaking results. But without a shared record of where that equipment actually is, most of it stays invisible to the researchers who need it, and even institutions struggle to keep an accurate inventory of what they themselves own, discipline by discipline.

The cost of that invisibility is concrete: postgraduate programmes run longer than they should while researchers chase equipment instead of running experiments, research budgets are spent buying equipment that already sits nearby, unused, at another institution, and promising work gets scaled back or abandoned when the search takes too long. Institutions earn nothing from assets sitting idle, and national research output falls short of what the investment in this equipment should deliver — a real drag on Nigeria's progress toward its sustainable development goals.

The same gap affects industry and regulators too. Private labs and industrial facilities often go uncounted in the same way institutions do — their equipment is just as invisible to the manufacturers and other private-sector users who need testing or analytical capacity and can't find it without building it in-house. Regulatory or standards bodies, meanwhile, lack a live, national picture of that infrastructure — institutional and private alike — when making compliance referrals, policy, or capacity-planning decisions.

Our history

Female scientists first raised this challenge during the Schlumberger Foundation Nigeria Outreach Pilot Program held in Abuja and Ibadan in September 2018. A work group led by Dr. Edu Inam of the University of Uyo was formed to build a solution, operating under the Network of Nigerian Women in STEM (NWISTEM) , with the generous support of the Schlumberger Foundation .

The system's architecture is designed and maintained by a research team at ICEESR, University of Uyo, where the project is domiciled. As Nigeria moves toward a knowledge and digital economy, this unified database is meant to give students, researchers, and other stakeholders what they need to pursue ground-breaking research for sustainable national development.

Vision

Every piece of scientific and technical equipment in Nigeria, known and accessible to the researchers, institutions, industry, and regulators who need it.

Mission

Create and maintain an easily accessible online inventory of functional scientific and technical equipment and laboratories across the country.

Strategy

We work directly with heads of institutions, regulatory and standards bodies, and industry partners to gather information, and to fund and maintain the database as shared national infrastructure — not a product any single institution has to build or pay for alone.

Aim & objectives

The National Scientific and Technical Equipment Databank aims to provide an online repository of equipment in laboratories across Nigeria. Specifically, that means:

  1. 1 Designing, developing, and maintaining a Nigerian software system for this purpose.
  2. 2 Coordinating the collation and harmonization of existing scientific equipment across Nigerian tertiary and allied institutions.
  3. 3 Developing a spatial interface for managing real-time equipment location, scheduling, and usage.
  4. 4 Developing intelligent, cloud-enabled scheduling so equipment resources can be found and visualized in real time, from anywhere.
  5. 5 Promoting accountability and efficient utilization of scientific and technical equipment across Nigeria.

Team

This initiative is coordinated by researchers across multiple institutions:

  • Prof. Edu Inam

    Prof. Edu Inam

    University of Uyo

  • Prof. Lami Nnamonu

    Prof. Lami Nnamonu

    FUAM, Makurdi

  • Prof. Folasade Olajuyigbe

    Prof. Folasade Olajuyigbe

    FUT, Akure

  • Prof. Folasade Dahunsi

    Prof. Folasade Dahunsi

    FUT, Akure

  • Prof. Modinah A. Raheem

    Prof. Modinah A. Raheem

    University of Ilorin

  • Prof. Cynthia Ibeto

    Prof. Cynthia Ibeto

    University of Nigeria

  • Dr. Thompson Izuagie

    Dr. Thompson Izuagie

    National Open University

  • Prof. Nsikak Benson

    Prof. Nsikak Benson

    Topfaith University

  • Prof. Moses Ekpenyong

    Prof. Moses Ekpenyong

    University of Uyo

  • Mr. Godwin Udofia

    Mr. Godwin Udofia

    University of Uyo

List your institution's equipment

Participation is free. If your institution wants its equipment and laboratories included in the national directory, contact the project office to get started.

Contact the project office

Sustainability

The database's architecture is designed and developed by a research team at ICEESR, University of Uyo, with the support of NWISTEM. The project is domiciled at the University of Uyo. To ensure long-term sustainability, other payable services will be launched over time.

Project office

Room 152, Faculty of Science Building
Permanent Site Campus
University of Uyo, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State
Phone: +234-8181750861; +234-8032278752; +234-9074507161
Email: iceesr@uniuyo.edu.ng