BLACK #STORIES:::: IOT (Internet Of Things) Innovations in Nigeria set to boom.

Nigeria and other African countries have been urged to, as a matter of urgency, leapfrog to the new technology of Internet of Things (IoT) that is currently causing some forms of disruption in the global technology world. The advice was given during the opening ceremony of the just concluded 35th GITEX Technology Week in Dubai, where Nigeria was represented, through the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the government agency responsible for the implementation of Information Technology (IT) policy in Nigeria.

The call for African countries to embrace the technology of IoT by the technology forum became necessary following new technology innovations that are driving business efficiency and profitability that are invariably disrupting the old ways of doing businesses globally. Vice President of Alibaba Group, Mr. Sicheng Yu, who spoke on 'The Future of Innovation and the Converging Forces of Change,' said: “The world is currently experiencing a number of converging forces that will both rewrite the rules of business and redefine the world of innovation.

Each of these driving forces has the potential of blindsiding us if we do not spend time crafting stories about the world to come." He posited that the technology of IoT would in the future, help cars to communicate with other cars on the roads and help in decongesting traffic caused by vehicular movements. He said more innovations were on the way, and urged African countries to key into the innovation, by promoting big data, cloud computing and the internet.

We are already experiencing increase in the demand for big data services across the globe but big data cannot work effectively, without cloud computing that is largely driven by the internet, Yu said. He promised that Alibaba Group would continue to use its platform to make system and applications work faster for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), in order to create business efficiency that will drive down cost of business.

 Chief Technology Officer of Accenture, Mr. Paul Daugherty, who spoke on 'Transformation in the Digital Business Era,' said "Global companies are reimagining and strategically transforming into digital businesses in order to achieve internal efficiencies, external growth and return to the role of disrupters." He highlighted the need for digital transformation across globe and explained that the globe needed three mega trends that would shape businesses.

The trends according to him would include connected world, data connectivity as well as intelligence and automation. He said over 3.5 billion people were already connected to the internet, but that the figure would double very soon, following the innovations that the IoT technology would bring.

NITDA used the GITEX event to showcase Nigerian technology start-ups, who displayed various technology solutions that were developed by them locally, in the Nigerian pavilion at GITEX. NITDA also used Nigeria's participation at this year's GITEX, to promote local technology from Nigeria with a view to attracting offshore partnerships and investment to Nigeria.