By EMEKA AGINAM

BY the time the just concluded Nigerian Innovation forum 2014 was drawing to a close, there were positive signals from discussants that ICT led innovations have the potentials of driving Nigeria’s competitiveness in education and agriculture for global competitiveness.

The Nigeria Innovation Forum 2014 was focused on creating a cross-industry business alliance to support and harness innovation in Africa to increase the continent’s competitiveness, as well as the national competitiveness of Nigeria specifically.

The forum was organised by Microsoft, Nokia, Dalber and hosted by the Cross River State Government.

Accordingly, the forum which attracted capacity audience from both public and private sectors of the Nigerian economy including NGOs provided an overview of the link between ICT, innovation and competitiveness; gave clear view of the current situation in the focus sectors of education and agriculture; outlined the potential of ICT to drive innovation in key sectors to increase Nigeria’s competitiveness, among others.

Key themes for the Nigeria Innovation forum 2014 reflected two of the key areas the forum’s partners believe ICT can play a critical role in driving innovation and competitiveness, including Agriculture Entrepreneurship and ‘Education for Employment’ with Power as a key enabler for both focus areas and sectors.

Time for paradigm shift

At the panel discussion on education that attracted stakeholders from both private and public sectors of the Nigerian economy, speaker after speaker strongly believe that it was time for paradigm shift from traditional to e-learning classroom environment for global competitiveness.

Although African teachers may have the challenge of accessing digital tools as a result of poor funding and remuneration, the panelists further noted that teachers who are preparing students for life in the 21st century should be digitally literate. Exploring areas of intervention, ICT, the panelists further noted was an essential tool for quality education, and quality education ultimately leads to a better future for students and their countries.

Requirements for Students:

According to the forum, students of today may require a new and different way of thinking and interacting with information, and a different approach to the education system overall to be competitive.

Concerns of the Forum

Part of the concerns raised by the
forum participants was that except issues around poor infrastructure, lack of skills among teachers, poor funding, lack of information of farm produce among others were resolved, Nigeria may not attain vision 20: 2020.

Part of the concerns is that the quality of education received in the traditional public and private schools does not prepare the students for the future which for the majority does not include university placements.

In order to take advantage of the 21st century, the youth population need to be properly equipped with education and opportunities to do so.

Pay attention to innovation:

Meanwhile, the Governor of
Cross River State, Senator Liyel Imoke in his opening remarks emphasized the need for the country to pay attention to innovation for national development.

“The earlier we adopt technology as a government, the better we will be in position to deliver services to people in an efficient way.  Education and agriculture are the two sectors to apply technology for wealth creation.  Cross River State is a destination for using technology to create wealth.  With technology, there is opportunity for students and entrepreneurs.  Young people should see opportunity in technology and embrace it”, he explained.

Use Technology to Prepare Students:

For the new Microsoft General
Manager, Kabelo Makwane, he assured that the global software giant was committed to working with governments, communities, schools and educators to use the power of information technology to prepare today’s students for tomorrow’s job.

Student Advantage

It would be recalled that in an effort to help prepare students for the technology skills required in the workforce, Microsoft had recently announced Student Advantage, a new benefit to qualifying institutions that brings Microsoft Office 365 Education to more students worldwide.

While commending the government of Cross River State for inclusive and participatory approach to governance, Makwane said, “We believe that by helping people reach their full potential, our business will naturally benefit their economic prosperity”.

At the forum, there were plenary sessions both on education and agriculture which discussed among other things, how best to use innovation solutions to improve education and agriculture.

Up-Skill Teachers for 21st Learning:

For Chinenye Mba-Uzokwu, Director/CEO of InfoGraphics Nigeria Limited,  teachers must be up-skilled so as to adapt to the 21st century learning to enable them prepare the students for workplace readiness.

According to him, those teachers who are no more trainable can be given a time frame to learn or withdraw.

Use Technology to facilitate teaching:

Also speaking, the Commissioner of Education, Cross River State Government, Prof. Offiong E. Offiong, said that for Nigeria to attain vision 20: 2020, imperative, e-learning is critical, noting that Nigeria must give every child education opportunity, adding that Nigeria must use technology to facilitate teaching and learning.

Similarly, the Deputy Director , (ICT) Nigeria Federal Ministry of Education, Uwem Asomugha said innovative educators who creatively and effectively use technology in their classroom to engage students and provide them with 21st century skills were urgently needed as an intervention in the Nigerian educational system. According to her, there should be data gathering and sharing in education sector so as to know the number of students enrolled in schools.

Panel’s Summary on Education:

Accordingly, the panel’s summary was that the current efforts to re-build the Nigerian education system will only result in repairing obsolete and dysfunctional structures.

According to the panel, Nigeria should not waste time trying to patch up and white-wash the collapsed structures – what is needed is to take the opportunity to quantum leapfrog by transforming our thinking about what a 21st century education system should look like and build it.

Taking advantage of technology, according to the panel was the only way to create a 21st century education system that is relevant to the socio-economic challenges of today, and yet remain scalable, lower cost, high quality, equitable, accessible to the greatest number and responsive to the diversity of our population.

Agriculture should be seen as business:

For the panellists during a session on agricultural productivity through innovation, farmers must be given adequate information about prices of products otherwise the middlemen will be eating the large share of the proceeds.

In the opinion of Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu, a Farmer and Social Entrepreneur, agricultural extension services were not effective, adding that sending information and getting feedback through SMS to farmers was necessary.

“Farmers cannot do well without extension workers.  Farmers need to know the prices of farm produce across the nation otherwise the middlemen will take the whole gain. Information is critical to farmers.  There is need to have more applications in local languages that can address the challenges of farmers”, he explained.

Summarizing the panel discussion on agriculture, Nneka Eze of Dalberg who facilitated the session noted that flows of information are constricted and are severely affecting the agriculture sector in Nigeria. Extension services which are meant to deploy some of this information to the farm level, she said were not being properly managed.  Extension officers and their managers often do not receive budgets to travel to the farm level.

While some innovations from organizations are attempting to solve the gap in information, she added that there was potential for others to innovate in agriculture, particularly on finding the gaps in information and closing them, and also on scaling existing innovations from one area / region to another.