Emerging Technologies: Nigeria to partner with Africa Creative Market

The Nigerian Government is to partner with Africa Creative Market to identify and train talented Youths in the nation’s creative industry on emerging technologies.

This will also strategically place Nigeria at the forefront of technologically driven business in Africa.

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the Director General, Kashifu InuwaIn disclosed this at the Africa Creative Market (ACM) event themed “The Importance of Tech in the Creative Industry,“ in Lagos South West Nigeria

He said that emerging technologies are disrupting the way humans produce, distribute and consume content adding that content creators remain central to everything.

Inuwa affirmed the Nigerian Government’s support to promote indigenous content in creators.

“We are partnering with ACM after this Summit to train you on Metaverse, Artificial intelligence, Blockchain and many more. We are identifying people that need the training and we will get the best trainers in the world to come and train the trainers.”

The NITDA Boss challenged African creatives to be part of the crop of people who will create Metaverse, as the days of playing the catch-up game by Africa are over.

“The creation of Metaverse will help achieve three things. It will ensure ownership and protect copyright. It will also create a source of income for you and will take you to the global stage,“ Inuwa maintained.

Emphasising the value emerging technologies come with, Inuwa encouraged the young people to position themselves toward creating value from them.

“There is a lot of research saying that Metaverse will add between five to thirteen trillion US dollars to the global GDP by 2030. So how are you positioning yourself to capture value from this? That’s why we are here today and that’s why the government is partnering with you to help build talents and support the course of building the Metaverse because it is going to be basically driven by creativity,“ the DG said.

He encouraged them to harness the internet in telling their indigenous stories to the rest of the world while capturing the needed value.

“According to research, the creativity market or the creative economy is valued at almost six trillion US dollars but Africa is perhaps capturing only 1.4 percent of that value; today in the world African music is one of the best, if you want people to dance, you’d have to play the African music, so why are we not capturing value from it?. It is because we don’t own the platforms. So, the only way we can capture the needed value is to be creating and being part of those platforms and allowing African characters to be seen on the platforms,” he added.

The 2022 ACM programme focused on training and empowering youths in creative technologies and covered different areas including animation, games and metaverse.

PIAK