Sanwo-Olu: Lagos Has Created Enabling Environment for Tech Innovation
Emma Okonji
Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu has said the Lagos State government has created an enabling environment for technology innovation to thrive in the state, through its deliberate policies and investments.
The enabling environment, according to him, spurred the Lagos-based startups to raise over $1.2 billion, which is 75 per cent of all startup investments in Nigeria in 2023.
The governor said this during the Art of Technology Lagos 6.0 event, which held in Lagos, with the theme: “Artificial Intelligence And The Lagos Digital Economy.”
Sanwo-Olu, who was represented by his deputy, Dr. Obafemi Hamzat, said: “Through deliberate policies and investments, we have created an enabling environment that fosters innovation and positioned Lagos as a global player in the technology value chain. The achievements reflect the ingenuity of our people and our unwavering commitment to innovation. But we must continue to build on this foundation to secure our position as a leader in the global tech ecosystem.”
Delivering a keynote paper at the event, Managing Director, Enterprise Business Group at Huawei Technologies, Mr. Terrens Wu, said from the first growth curve of the informatization age, human society has achieved ubiquitous interconnection, connecting a large number of users and causing a traffic explosion. “This has accelerated the demand for digital transformation in human society and spawned a second growth curve with 5G and cloud as the main engines. At present, the third growth curve leading the intelligent world is ready to take place, and human society is entering a new era of comprehensive intelligence,” Wu said.
According to him, the demand for Artificial Intelligence (AI) computing power is increasing rapidly. By the end of this year, we expect that the demand for AI computing power may exceed the demand for general computing power, he said, adding that building an elastic and efficient multi-calculation infrastructure with optimal AI computing power, which is about building an AI native cloud infrastructure, is the key to AI development.
