Denis Opudo
Africa is viewed as the region where there is an increase in the digital market globally. However, there is a call for the establishment of a digital center in the continent to place the continent at par with other regions in the world where the digital revolution is witnessed. This is according to Mr Idris Ayodeji Bello, partner and afropreneur at Lofty- Inc Allied Partners Limited and Co-Founder of Wennovation Hub, Nigeria. Bello was talking at the fourth biennial lecture of the Africa Regional Centre for Information Science of the University of Ibadan (UI).
Bello was a guest at the forum. The more the continent becomes digitally connected the more it produces dynamic new business models and innovative web-based applications. Bello is a global thought and an award-winning strategist who is rich with technological experience. In 2012 he was amongst the CNN’s Top Ten African Technology Voices, and in 2011 he came out as The Huffington Post Greatest Person of the Day.
The 2017 lecture named Africa’s Footprints in the Digital Age was meant to directly affect the African tech market according to the Director of the Centre, Prof. Wole Olatokun. The sectors that were given much attention during the talk were entertainment, finance, agriculture, education and governance that are greatly influenced by Information and Communication Technology. Information Science is seen as a discipline that acts as bedrock to a number of fields and specialized disciplines.
According to Bello, Africa should not invest much of its energy and resources on digital alone but also consider the analogue backbone. The laying of a proper analogue foundation will offer the digital world a good environment of operation. Digitization gives the continent the opportunity to benefit from initiatives that were historically impossible to attain. African engineers can partner with European engineers on projects, placing themselves into a global digital supply chain that is coming up. Bello called for training of a new generation of Africans to ensure that they can understand the emerging digital technologies and get entrepreneurial opportunities that come with it.
