Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has emphasized the importance of technology to solving the existential challenges confronting Africa.
He said with technology, the problems of education, health and even agriculture would be easily solved.
Osinbajo made this assertion on Thursday during The Google for Nigeria event held in Lagos.
His words: “Africa is confronted with existential challenges, and there is simply no time to waste in resolving these problems. The answer that providence has given us is technology. The great purveyors of technology such as our hosts today Google, and their collaborators – 21st Century Technologies Limited and Backbone Connectivity Network (BCN), are not mere corporations in search of profit and some social good, they literarily hold the future of generations of humanity in their hands.”
Buttressing his point, Osinbajo said in view of the population explosion in the future, it would be difficult to carry out some basic necessities of life without the use of technology.
According to him, in Nigeria, for instance, training nearly 200 million young people by 2045, in classrooms alone would be impossible.
But with the use of the internet and even mobile telephony, that problem would be solved.
He said it was imperative therefore that the young people must be connected to knowledge and innovation all over the world.
“Co-creation efforts of innovators and inventors require broadband to be consummated,” he stated.
According to him, without connectivity, “the development trajectory of our nation and continent is truncated.”
He stated that it had become obvious now that the availability of food and healthcare for the huge numbers of people would depend on how democratized the technology had become.
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He said it would be impossible to provide enough food, drugs or vaccines in Africa without the availability of innovation in agriculture, and technology in farming and the production of drugs and vaccines.
Democratising Artificial Intelligence would therefore be significant in changing the human development story, he said.
“Indeed every step that is taken to democratise technology is a quantum leap in the African development story and a major contribution to Global stability and growth. This is why the launch of Google Station here in Nigeria, is an enormously significant event,” Osinbajo declared.
He said the implication was that Google and 21st Century, would be providing free WiFi access in several public spaces in Nigeria.
According to him, more exciting was that several markets would benefit from the free internet access.
He said the partnership was particularly important to Nigeria because “we have in the past one year, in our energizing markets project, been providing solar power to markets and economic clusters across the country.”
