Lagos Ministry organizes young African industrialist week for global business competitiveness

 Lagos State Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Cooperatives has organized the Africa Industrialisation Day/Youth African Industrialist Week to create awareness and educate business owners especially young African industrialists that technology is the way forward for global business competitiveness.

Speaking on the theme:, Leveraging on technology for business growth and sustainability, Post COVID–19 era, Co-Founder PDMA Digital & Tech Limited, Dr. Innocent Ekeleme said: “Today, we are focusing on industrialization in Africa and leveraging on technology to grow and sustain your business”.

According to Ekeleme, industrialisation has gone through four phases; firs,t industrial revolution which was in Britain, which focused on using Steam to power engines.

“And we moved from there to the second industrial revolution, mostly in the US and Europe where we began to see electrification, usage of petroleum energy to drive large scale manufacturing, then we went into the third industrial revolution where information technology was the driving force of the systems. .

He said further that now, we have entered the fourth industrial revolution which leverages on digitalisation, AI, Robotics and all of that integrated networking to drive systems.

“So, in this fourth industrial revolution, technology is a driving factor. Countries like US, China are leading in this space. Here we are focusing on how Africa countries can take advantage of this current industrial revolution to catch up with other countries that maximized the First to Third industrial revolution.

Continuing, Ekeleme said: “We also took time to discuss with the business people on how to understand the role of digital and technology in growing their business. We made them know that if they don’t take technology serious their businesses can go into extinction.

“Technology should not be something you do at the flank, technology should be at the core of your business. So, starting from the senior leadership of the business to all departments of the business, technology should be a priority, the business should run on technology. If you look at Nigeria, our demography is mainly generation XYZ and Alpha.

“This generation is IT and Technology inclined. With NITDA saying that by 2030 we will have 95 per cent  digital literacy. Businesses must sit up and prioritize technology. We began to discuss specific areas where business people can leverage on technology”.

“Considering that some aspect of technology is expensive which SMEs may not be able to afford it, there are some affordable technology that you can deploy. There are four key areas of technology – research and development, operations, manufacturing and marketing. Presently, we encouraged a lot these businesses to consider marketing that doesn’t require huge amount of money.

“For instance, with N10,000; N20,000 or N50,000. business can start deploying technology as a marketing tool, then as you grow and make more revenue, you can begin to apply it in research and development and in mass production and even in operations”, he added.

On the role of government to actualize this in Africa, especially Nigeria, Dr Ekeleme said the government needed to play three key roles – policy, investment and patronage.

“Unfortunately, Nigeria and African governments are lacking behind unlike their counterparts in US and China. China has allocated $1.4 trillion to invest on technology. Again, they make policies that support technologically-inclined organisations, and they patronize their products and services.

“In Nigeria, we are celebrating that we have young six companies that have attained UNICORN ($1billion Capitalization) . But the truth is that it still ventures capitalists from the US, Europe, China that are investing that money.

“That means technically that the money is going back there, this is capital flight. Government should play an active role, and invest in companies like Jumia,Opay, Flutterwave, Paystack, Piggyvest etc. If the government has missed the investment window of these established Unicorns, then she should look inwards to identify new startups and be part of their growth story”, Ekeleme stated.

For a better society.