DVCRI

The mandate of the Directorate of Technology Transfer is to facilitate the administration o world class research undertaken at the University into tangible products and services that positively impacts on industry and society thereby contributing to the uptake of knowledge-based economy initiative in Botswana. This is in line with the University Vision 2023. The Directorate manages the development of Technologies from a non-disclosure through feasibility assessment that produces a prototype, and finally commercialising as a product or service. Commercialisation is operable through the University’s Technology Research Park after protecting the Intellectual Property of the technology 

Established in 2017, the Directorate of Technology Transfer conceived a progressive plan that encompasses imparting outlying knowledge that is not specific to the academic field of the researcher. The University successfully registered to be Technology and Innovation Support Center (TISC) through the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) to enable it to offer specialist assistance in a wide range of services to researchers including patent and trademark search as well as copyrights. The Directorate established, and offered training, to intellectual Property Champions who were selected from the Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Science. During the 2020/21 financial year, the university undertook to convert three research projects to products and services and only managed to convert two research projects into products which is a 66% achievements 

The Directorate upholds an environment that is favourable to research taking into consideration that the University researchers are interrupted by the vital academic pursuits like lecturing and publishing. The eliminating bureaucratic red tape continues to be a challenge. Although the Directorate started being allocated budget to work with from the 2019/20 financial year, it still faces the problem of funding which adversely affects both the technical and business feasibility study performed eight projects at the Technology Research Park. Another challenge is that fact that academic peer review papers which are published in journals do not necessarily guarantee the development of products and services that address the needs of industry and society hence the below par contribution to technology transfer.