Nigerian tech companies got exposure for cross-border investment at GITEX Africa, a tech summit that held in Marrakesh, Morocco.
At the summit, tech leaders from across Africa and the world gathered to collaborate and pledged their commitments to accelerating cross-continent investment opportunities.
The Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, while at the event, stated that Lagos was already home to some of Africa’s largest data centres.
According to him, the state’s Start-Up Act 2022 and knowledge, innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship project in Yaba were also propelling Lagos and Nigeria into a hub of global innovation.
He noted that while investments were crucial to the ecosystem, it was important for the state to create more avenues for investors to come and see what innovators were doing.
Sanwo-Olu said, “There are a lot of opportunities from this event, our plan is that we also want to host the event in a year or two.
“I have been speaking with the organisers at the highest level and I am very impressed with what Morocco has done.”
He added that, “They got a national commitment before getting to the city of Marrakech. So, as I am going back home, I am speaking with federal agencies, NCC, and NITDA. All of us need to come together and speak at a national level, it is not easy to put together something like this. So, I am looking forward to Lagos being a host maybe in the next 12 to 24 months.
“The least we can do is to ensure we bring the founders, industry players to meet our people and we can also go out of Nigeria, west Africa to bring everybody together.”
The Head of Delegation, Nigerian Communications Commission, Babagana Digima, said the thriving nature of startups from Nigeria had become a foundation to engineer more investment interest in the country.
He added, “As you can see in other shows that we have been to, Nigerian startups have done excellently well. Most of their ideas are commercially viable in most cases and they address some needs of society like ours which are developing.
“To give a background, in February this year, we sponsored some startups to an event and they cupped 25 per cent of the prizes won. This shows that the startups have working ideas and solutions addressing issues.”
Digima said the vast opportunities in Nigeria were ensuring that the country continued to be an investment destination.
He stated, “We are seeing it from the type of inquiries that we are having. We have received inquiries not only about ICT but also about defence, the chemical industry, and software. The take home is that everybody is looking at Nigeria.
“One is because of our population, which means there is a market there and we are the biggest most populous country in Africa. We see what others are doing and we know we can replicate this in Nigeria. The governor of Lagos State said he wants to see an event like GITEX be held in Lagos.”