Nigerian government believes that the Smart Africa Initiative would not be realised without addressing the continent’s infrastructure deficit. This was the submission of the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama.
A smart city is an urban development vision to integrate information and communication technology (ICT) and Internet of things (IoT) technology in a secure fashion to manage a city’s assets.
He urged private sectors in Nigeria to invest in ICT in order to bridge infrastructure deficit in the sector. He made the statement at the Transform Africa Summit, 2017, in Kigali, Rwanda.
The goal of smart cities is to leverage technology solutions to improve efficiency of cities in Africa. He maintained that lack of infrastructure was one of the impediments that must be addressed for Nigeria and Africa to develop smart cities.
He added that Public Private Partnership would play critical roles in driving technology in Nigeria.
He said: “As it was said there is no one technology that is necessarily going to overcome some of these challenges of infrastructures. What it just requires and I think this is what came out clearly, is partnership between government and the private sector and the academia.”
