NITDA calls for collaborations to grow SMEs
The Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency, Kashifu Inuwa, has called for collaborations in order to drive the growth of the startup ecosystem in Nigeria.
He made the call at a dinner meeting with some key stakeholders of Lagos Business Ecosystem, including representatives from Microsoft, MasterCard, Norebase, among others.
A statement signed by the NITDA spokesperson, Hadiza Umar noted NITDA’s commitment to giving the ecosystem the needed support to boost the sector’s contribution to the economy and strengthen the value chain.
Inuwa also stressed the need to build trust between the government and the ecosystem.
He also emphasised the need for collaboration to drive innovation and overcome existing issues around investments, partnerships, commercialisation of innovations, enabling policies, and acquisition of relevant skills, as well as training.
The NITDA DG also said that the Start-up Bill would deal with the bottlenecks and fast-track the anticipated growth of the ecosystem.
He added that the Code of Practice for Interactive Platforms would engender appropriate monitoring to enforce compliance with established regulations guiding the sector.
“We need to decide what and what the right regulations are so that every startup and industry player would have a Code of Practice that works for everyone and is adhered to the latter. Also, I think we need to form a union for Startup Ecosystem.”
Punch/Hauwa Abu
