NCS applauded for IT innovation centre project

By Adedeji Fakorede

The Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, has commended Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) for its initiative to set up a six storey building for its Information Technology (IT) Innovation Centre in Lagos.

The minister gave the commendation while laying the foundation stone of the proposed building.

Work commenced shortly after the foundation was laid, and it is expected to be completed and inaugurated by June 2017.

The idea to build an IT Innovation Centre was borne out of the need to increase the number of Innovation Centres in the country, which has been described as insufficient for rapid technology development in the country.

According to the minister, “Technology, particularly ICT, is the critical driver of the knowledge-based economy of our post-modern world. As many notable pundits predicted in the course of the 20th Century, emphasis and global relevance in today’s 21st Century world, has shifted from nations with huge natural resources to nations with developed human resources that can technologically explore, exploit and manage natural resources for the benefit of mankind.”

“This reality of global relevance is now impacting unavoidably on our collective national psyche in Nigeria today with the situation of ever-dwindling international oil prices and, by extension, ever-dwindling national revenue generation. In today’s global village, the frontier-knowledge elites, the elites of the technological and the digital revolutions, are the undisputable custodians of strategic and economic power, hence the proposed Innovation Centre by NCS is key to building Nigeria through the training and acquisition of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) skills,” Adebayo said.

He added that the time has come for Nigeria, as a member of the MINT Bloc, to deliver innovative products and services to the world and assert itself on the world stage alongside the western nations presently leading our world.

He called on all well-meaning Nigerians to partner NCS so as to make the project a reality.

President of NCS, Professor Sola Aderounmu, while welcoming the minister to the foundation laying ceremony, said “NCS noted that a recent world bank appraisal concludes that weak university-industry linkage in Nigeria is the greatest impediment to the development of a knowledge-based economy, and went on to recommend the prioritization of measures to develop structures and systems for strengthening the industry through the establishment of at least six university-based knowledge parks/technology innovation centres over the next six years.”

“This project is to provide such a model. The IT innovation centre was conceived to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies through array of business support resources,” Aderounmu said.

He explained that there exists 27 Technology Incubation/Innovation Centres in Nigeria including the NITDA-sponsored IDEA Laboratories in Yaba, Lagos and Calabar and other private sector owned and operated ones such as CCHub, but noted that they are still inadequate for Nigeria and could not provide jobs for millions of unemployed Nigerians.

He also said none of the innovation centres focused on incubating ideas coming out of our Universities.

“That is, precisely focusing on taking ideas from ‘The Laboratory to the Market Place’ which allow for commercialization of university research. It is for these reasons that NCS decided to setup an incubation/innovation centre to focus on addressing weak university-industry linkage,” he said.