Professor Yemi Oshinbajo shared the Federal Government’s plan for Technology and Innovation in Nigeria today.
He did this in his keynote speech at “The Platform Abuja” powered by Pastor Poju Oyemade and the Covenant Christian Centre.
Here is the plan
“The Federal Government’s plan for Technology and Innovation:
We are establishing technology innovation hubs across the country. 2 super hubs; one in Lagos and Abuja and 6 regional technology hubs in the 6 Geo-political zones.
In partnership with several major technology companies, the hubs will be fully resourced with infrastructure and capacity building tools. Each hub will be designed to produce relevant innovative technology solutions to a wide range of business, commercial and Government problems. For example, Alternative Energy Solutions, Creative technology, Public Service delivery in health education and government processes.import substitution etc.
Also starting in July of this year (2016) we have budgeted for the training of 65,000 young Nigerians in Hardware and Software services and more sophisticated services such as animation.
This would mean, we would be building more local capacity to build and assemble hardware and to write innovative programs. We’ll also be focusing on technology for media and entertainment. We intend to create a reservoir of human capacity in technology that can be exported internationally. Nigeria can lead India as a market for technology and innovation and talent.
Even our training of 500,000 graduates as volunteer teachers also has a technology component. Each of them in phases will be given a device which will contain a variety of technological training applications to enable them attain varying degrees of proficiency in technology
On June 23rd, 2016 we are launching a special presidential initiative on innovative technology. We’ll be bringing together to the villa 50 of the most innovative start-ups, they’ll be meeting with major technology and innovation companies as well as venture capitalists, collaborating with the Federal Government to take their ideas to the next level.
We are also creating technology opportunities in our import substitution and diversification plan by encouraging innovative technologies to spearhead smart domestic production. For example, in Agriculture our extension services will man and map soil data with best crop and harvest practices, ensuring that farmers get relevant and tailored advice via cloud technology
Also we see immense possibilities for medicine and education. The scale and dimension of our innovation aspiration clearly demonstrates that we hope to achieve a lot in a very short space of time.”
~ Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) (Vice-President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria)
