AFRITEX and Nigeria smart cities Initiative, an NGO has called for an accelerated wellness and accountability of the country’s digital economy.
The CEO of AFRITEX, Mr Oyesola Oworu made the call in his goodwill message at the 3rd edition conference of Sustainable Smart Cities and Digital Economy Forum held in Abuja on Tuesday with the theme “Accelerating the realisation of smart cities and Digital economy.”
Oworu said that the forum was committed to collective agenda for sustainable smart city and digital economy initiative for Nigeria.
“Taking a look at the preparedness, unique challenges, we need to identify substantial opportunities to build inclusive, sustainable smart economy through leadership and collaboration to maximise the intemperability of new technologies across different industry in Nigeria.”
He added that 50% of world population lives in urban areas adding that by 2050, it would be closer to 70%, saying that the 21 century economy has keyed into the smart cities.
He also stressed that the current model of urbanization was clearly not stable, hence the need to accelerate digital economy.
“We have to be smarter and our cities have to be smarter, because that’s where information and communication technologies (ICTs) have the capacity to make a real difference,” he said.
Also, the Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu said that Smart City Agenda was directly correlated to driving increasing
socio-economic outcomes.
Sanwo-Olu, who was represented by Olatunbosun Alake there was need to drive positive human capital development outcomes for high would translate Smart Agenda.
He stressed that forums like this usually facilitate some of the most important discussion on how to improve the living standards of Nigerians through smart city initiatives.
“It is safe to say that we are becoming well acquainted not just with the risks but the
negative outcomes of poor planning and the underinvestment in our most
important resource, the people’s mind.
” In our most recent Smart City
Implementation design with the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP), the most important implementation tenet was capacity development and building a data enabled workforce.
“It is important that to accelerate the realisation of smart cities and the digital economy.” he said.
He also said that the Smart City and Digital economy development would
also require keeping pace with the adoption of effective urban governance ideologies that are dynamic and agile and leverage multiple technologies.
He said this would improve the performance of health service, transportation,education, implement intelligent and sustainable infrastructure, and drive effective monitoring and evaluation strategies to speak to the outcomes.
