By 
By Oluwatobi Opusunju and Chinedu James
Great innovations and innovators are not meant to be shelved in the libraries. They are meant to resolve life solutions and enter the market with high commercial value. This is the conviction of the Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, in his assertion at the recent #ArewaTechTalk in Abuja organised by Arewa Tech Society. The #ArewaTechTalk took place simultaneously in the 19 Northern States and Abuja where Dr Pantami addressed an audience of young people, innovators and budding tech entrepreneurs.
“We need to use platforms like this, the #ArewaTechTalk to promote our young and brilliant innovators, most of our innovations in Nigeria are kept in the libraries which are not encouraging,” said the NITDA’s boss at the event where he also stated that the agency has invested massively in human capacity development as part of its mandate to build innovators who can change the growth dynamics of the country from a technology perspective.
“At NITDA we provide opportunities for students to go for their second degrees and up to PhD level. Ours is to always provide enabling environment for knowledge-based engagements,” said Dr Pantami.
The Arewa Tech Talk was designed to bring together all the techies in the northern region and other stakeholders to address the common challenges and potential that could alter the tech narrative of northern Nigeria for good.
Dr Pantami addresses the audience at #TechTalkArewa
Founder of Arewa Tech Society and convener of the #ArewaTechTalk, Salihu Tanko Yakasai said: “We want to use technology and solve our problems as a society. We can apply technology and solve problems of health, education, environment, name it. There is less appreciation of the services being rendered by the technology community. Hence there is the need to improve the market.”
Part of the submissions at the tech talk include the need to move from mere rhetoric or just creating media attention to having a more practical approach to technology development; need to enhance technical skills acquisition by young people, expose them to mentorship and foster an ecosystem to nourish tech solutions and tech ventures; the need to move from prototyping of solutions to real-time commercialization of solutions. The event also recognises the need to engage non-tech stakeholders in furthering the objective of promoting technology usage, diffusion and production in northern Nigeria.
