As the global economy experiences slow growth, Keynesian and pro-market economists now seem to have re-focused their development lens on Africa’s growth prospects. They all agree that Africa’s struggling and fast growing economies now need more trade, more investments, more technology and a culture of innovation.
This point of view is shared by leading technology company IBM, whose executives and scientists around the world believe that companies and countries can transform their balance sheets and economies through innovation and timely investment in appropriate computing technology.
According to Uyi Stewart, Chief Scientist of the IBM Research Africa laboratory in Kenya, the company’s continued commitment to Africa is driven by a desire to support national and sub-national jurisdictions with leading edge technology solutions and services that will help upgrade current social and economic conditions.
“In all areas of human development, technology now exists to allow our people all over the continent to quit living in the past,” Stewart said.
Discussing Nigeria’s innovation agenda with government and business leaders in Abuja recently, Stewart said: “It is important that government lead the way by becoming more efficient in the delivery of services to citizens and this can only happen when technology begins to be at the core of decision making and public sector administration.”
IBM reportedly invests as much as $6 billion on technology research and development (R&D) annually; and it continues to shape the future of computing through cognitive computing and cloud platforms that will help clients drive transformation across multiple industries.
In 2015, IBM topped the list of annual U.S. patent recipients, receiving 7,355 patents. It generated more than 2,000 patents in areas related to cognitive computing and the company’s cloud computing and services portfolio. These investments will continue to drive transformation for IBM’s clients and business in years to come.
Nigeria’s public and private sector firms could definitely benefit from the company’s patent leadership, as IBM inventors who reside outside the U.S. contributed to more than 36% of the company’s 2015 patents.
In one of technologies hottest areas of cognitive computing and artificial intelligence, IBM patented systems to help machines interpret motion-laden words allowing them converse in more natural ways, and to understand language by interacting with humans. IBM patents in 2015 also created machines that mimic the brain, handle information overload, give machines good judgment, and help machines understand emotion.
As much as 70 percent of the world’s data is currently managed on IBM systems. Often hailed as the silent engine behind the world’s ATM networks, 80 percent of Nigerian banks currently depend on IBM enterprise systems to drive their critical back-end and service delivery operations.
Stewart says IBM is equipped to support the Nigerian government’s drive to create a conducive environment for innovation, investment and entrepreneurial activity. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has repeatedly said government is desirous of quickly improving Nigeria’s ease of doing business status and by extension stimulating a pro-business, pro-development milieu for trade and commerce.
Nigeria has dropped 75 places over the past decade to 169th out of 189 countries ranked in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing business 2016 report.
“Advanced data analytics, security and cloud computing technologies exist to resolve Nigeria’s ease of doing business challenges and ultimately make the Nigerian environment attractive to foreign direct and portfolio investments,” Stewart remarked during a meeting with the Honourable Minister for Trade & Investment, Okechukwu Enelamah.
The Minister for Communication and Technology, Adebayo Shittu also hosted the IBM team in his office. He welcomed IBM’s initiatives and noted that public – private sector collaboration has been the cardinal focus of the ministry under his watch.
Stewart’s team which was led by Taiwo Otiti, Country General Manager, IBM West Africa, also met with Aliyu Aziz, Director-General of the Nigeria Identity Management Commission (NIMC); Abdulfatai Buhari, Chairman, Senate Committee on Information Technology and Cybercrime and Uzoma Dozie, managing director, Diamond Bank Plc.
Jumoke Akiyode
