Despite the huge human, natural and mineral resource available in Nigeria, Despite the huge amount spent yearly on the acquisition of foreign education, despite all the lip service the Nigeria Government plays to education, technology and development, Nigeria seems to the in a regressive state as it seems that every other nation are taking leaps and strides in advance and all we in Nigeria think about is “who becomes the next Governor, Who becomes the next President”… Nigeria a nation once acclaimed to be the giant in Africa has all but become a shadow of its former self. While our leaders battle over elections still two years away, other nations that are serious about change and development have taken the bull by the horn and started to take concrete steps in ensuring that their citizens have a better tomorrow.
It baffles me how our leaders would sit back and read inspiring stories about the 180 degree transformation sister countries have embarked on and yet fold their hands and do nothing. Recently (for those conversant with foreign News), we remember that earlier this month, Ghanaian president John Mahama launched Hope City, a $10 billion high-tech hub aiming to foster technological growth and attract major players in the global ICT industry to the West African country.
Even though right now, if you decide to walk through the project’s reserved area, all you see is nothing more than an empty plot of land, covered by just a few shrubs and the odd Neem tree. But it is expected that within a few years, those grass plains just outside Accra, Ghana, could be transformed into a fertile breeding ground for world-class innovation.
This ambitious project is the brainchild of Ghanaian businessman Roland Agambire, head of local technology group RLG Communications. Smart and futuristic, the hub’s sustainable facilities will include an assembly plant for various tech products, business offices, an IT university and a hospital, as well as housing and recreation spaces, including restaurants, theaters and sports centers.
One of the visionaries Mr Agambire said “What is lacking in the African continent is a place where you can have well-designed products, backed with concrete research and proper hardware and software developers to be able to create infrastructure for the telecoms industry.
“So the inspiration behind Hope City is to have an iconic ICT park where ICT players from all over the world can converge to design, fabricate and export software and everything arising from this country,” he adds.
Construction is expected to begin by June 2013 and when completed — within three years, if everything goes as planned — the technology park could house 25,000 residents and create jobs for 50,000 people.
The entrepreneur says the IT hub has already attracted several partners, including Microsoft, with Microsoft corporate vice president Ali Faramawy among the guests at the Hope City launch event.
“What we want to do is to create the environment and the human resource base for the technology industry to be able to use that [environment] and tap that opportunity,” he says. “That’s what has happened in China, that’s what has happened in other places of the world.”
If we felt that Ghana was an exception, what about Kenya, with the launch of Hope City in Ghana coming just a few months after Kenya broke ground on its own flagship tech mega project; located some 60 kilometers southeast of the capital Nairobi, Konza Techno City is being touted as “Africa’s Silicon Savannah,” a major IT hub that aims to create some 100,000 jobs by 2030, can we imagine? Nations are planning ahead, as far forward as 2030 yet the Nigerian Government would not still be able to generate 10,000 Megawatts of Power by that time.
Kenya has already experienced a major IT boom in recent years, spurred in part by a surge in the number of innovation centers, such as Nairobi-based iHub, which enable young coders and aspiring entrepreneurs to collaborate, network and develop their trailblazing ideas. We have Kony, this is a company developed and managed by a team of young software engineers and designers whereas in Nigeria, the best we have is a second rated “Computer Village” that is nothing more than a market flocked with cheap imitations of hardware and pirated software.
When will this government wake up and see that ICT is the way of the future, when will this government see that unless lip servicing is gotten away with and concrete developmental steps are taken, we would always remain a sleeping giant.
One thing is certain, Africa is hungry for development”. The actions and inactions of today would come back to bite us tomorrow.
Mr President: oil cannot last forever, States: Monthly allocations cannot last forever, it is time we start to create an enabling environment to encourage risk taken and development. A word is enough for the wise