Gitex technology week is one of the world’s most attended technology events and unarguably the biggest in this part of the world and the Middle East.
This is one annual event that I usually look forward to attending basically because of the mind boggling innovations that are usually showcased.
Unfortunately, Africa aside Nigeria, is usually poorly represented at this event for a number of reasons which you may already know. However, it is my opinion that successful African companies should see platforms such as this as a means to forming new global partnerships.
I believe that Africa needs to start talking less and doing more to lift Africa from the doldrums by taking advantage of technology and emulating countries that have leapfrogged and are now using technology to set the pace even for far more advanced countries.
The United Arab Emirates is an example of a country that is blazing the trail when it comes to technology. I sort of think that GITEX as far as the UAE is concerned is a subtle way of setting the pace for the rest of the world and at the same time selling Dubai as the financial and tourism hub of the region.
Ever heard of the Dubai Smart City Project? A good number of Africans may really not understand what a smart city truly means because, quite frankly, it may be close to what you’d see in sci-fi movies.
However, Dubai is making the idea of a smart city a reality and this much was revealed through the various demo sessions that officials of the project took us through.
The Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency, Isa Ibrahim, led other government officials both at the federal and state levels including yours truly to tour the massive Dubai smart city project exhibition pavilion because of his conviction that Nigeria should set the pace when it comes to technology development in Africa.
The fact is that what we saw exhibited was not exactly rocket science, but a result of careful planning and unwavering dedication towards a vision of staying ahead of the rest. One of the officials told us that Dubai aims to be the very first city that would actually make multiple use cases of block chain technology a reality.
The official said, “The smart city research team came up with 19 use cases (problems being faced today) and out of them, two use cases have gone live on block chain.”
One service that caught my attention was the one designed to simplify company registration processes using block chain. If I juxtapose this vision with a country like — Finish Reading on the Punch