The federal government through the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has announced plans to support Nigerian startups that are developing products on emerging technologies.
The director-general of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa, who disclosed this, while presenting a keynote during the opening of the IoT West Africa Conference in Lagos, highlighted the transformative potential of emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain.
According to Inuwa, “NITDA wants to encourage development and also have innovation sandboxes where the Agency can support and encourage those who have ideas to come up with use cases and through that, we can help them to stand, help them to create businesses, and also take them to market.”
He also disclosed plans of establishing research centres for emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain, among others across the six geo-political zones of the country.
“This is in line with one of the focus areas of the agency in building a robust technology research ecosystem. The research focus areas for NITDA include IoT, blockchain technology, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV); additive manufacturing, AI, and robotics. We are establishing a special-purpose vehicle that is going to look into these key areas and also establish research centres across the six geo-political zones of Nigeria that will be targeting these six key areas of emerging technologies,” he further added.
The DG however stressed the need to prioritize empowerment of young people, building a strong digital economy, and ensuring inclusive development.
In the same vein, the managing director of Vertex Next, the organizers of the IoT West Africa conference, Shitij Taneja, said, “the reason for hosting the IoT West Africa, which is co-located with Africa data center and cloud Expo Africa is because we see a lot of potential in the market and the growing number of youths that are working towards the development of technology.”
The choice of Nigeria as the host of the event was because of its pedigree as ‘Africa’s next Silicon Valley’, Taneja said, adding that Nigeria’s vast youth population and the vibrant startup ecosystem make it a powerhouse for technology development in Africa.
According to him, with increasing investments in data centers coming into the country, Nigeria now has a big market for IoT as people are adopting the technologies, adding that part of the purpose of the conference was to also bring in investors to invest in Nigerian startups that are creating products around emerging technologies.
