Nigeria Seeks to Further Grow Economy Via Innovation Summit 2019
Nigeria will be holding the 4th edition of the Innovation Summit in August this year. The program has been prepared with the theme: ‘Accelerating Nigeria’s Economic Growth through Innovation’.
The summit is an annual event in Nigeria. It promotes the need for businesses, organizations, entrepreneurs, and government in Nigeria to become more innovative. It also portrays how to use innovation to drive sustainable economic development. The program aims at helping the country to embrace innovation and move in the direction of digital transformation. This will occur through the use of Emerging Technologies and Trends, Research, Development, Commercialization, Entrepreneurship, and Investments.
Each year, the summit provides a platform that fosters collaborations among Government agencies, businesses, international organizations, innovators, researchers, the academic community, and startups.
While announcing this year’s summit, the CEO, Emerging Media (the organizers of the summit), Mr. Kenneth Omeruo said: “This is the time for Nigeria with her youthful population, to leverage new technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Blockchain, Internet of Things, Robotics, Data sciences, etc. And apply them in sectors like Health, Agriculture, Financial Services, Education, Renewable Energy, and Clean-techs to solve problems around us. These opportunities are already creating new businesses that are becoming a major source of foreign investments into Nigeria. And that is a major way of accelerating Nigeria’s economic growth. This is our motivation each year to host this summit”.
He further explained that small businesses and startups hold the key to sustainable economic growth for the country. In 2018 – according to Partech Africa report – Nigerian startups attracted $306 million in funding over 26 deals. Mr. Omeruo, therefore, encouraged the government to provide more support and create the enabling environment for Nigerian businesses and innovations to thrive.
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Program Coordinator for Nigeria Innovation Summit 2019, Mr. Tony Ajah, said: “Each year, we bring in experts from around the world in several innovation ecosystems to Nigeria to share these global opportunities and network with participants at the summit. This year’s summit will feature keynote presentations, panel discussions, workshops, exhibitions focusing on Healthtech, Agritech, Renewable energy and CleanTech, FinTech, Edutech, Techtainment, Emerging Technologies, Research, collaborations, Women Entrepreneurship, Youths, Technology, and Entrepreneurship Development in Nigeria”.
The 2019 Nigeria Innovation Summit offers great opportunity through sponsorship, partnership, exhibitions of innovative products, ideas, applications, and services. They, therefore, call for participation from government agencies, international organizations, academics, business leaders, companies, organizations, SMEs, CEOs, entrepreneurs, decision makers, and innovators.
