IBM restates commitment to Nigeria’s business development

TECHNOLOGY giant, IBM has restated its commitment to business and skills development in Nigeria and other African countries.
According to IBM, increased collaboration and knowledge sharing among citizens, countries and companies will accelerate social and economic re-engineering, even as policy and development experts must be wary of reinventing the wheel.

IBM said countries’ must begin to tap new insights from available data, connect to the global information infrastructure and join forces with established institutions with a proven track record of achievements and transformative results.

The firm said its continued commitment to Africa is driven by a desire to support national and sub-national jurisdictions with leading edge technology solutions and services that will help upgrade current social and economic conditions.

Chief Scientist of the Nairobi, Kenya-based IBM Research Africa laboratory, Dr. Uyi Stewart, who said all these, added: “In all areas of human development, technology now exists to allow our people all over the continent to quit living in the past.”‎

Stewart, at different meetings with government and business leaders in Abuja and Lagos, said: “It is important that government lead the way by becoming more efficient in the delivery of services to citizens and this can only happen when technology begins to be at the core of decision-making and public sector administration.”‎

The firm disclosed that in 2015, IBM topped the list of yearly U.S. patent recipients, receiving 7,355 patents. The company’s inventors have received more than 88,000 U.S. patents during the past 23 years. As much as 70 per cent of the world’s data is currently managed on IBM systems.

It disclosed that 80 per cent of Nigerian banks currently depend on IBM enterprise systems to drive their critical back-end and service delivery operations.

Stewart said IBM is equipped to support the Nigerian government’s drive to create a conducive environment for innovation, investment and entrepreneurial activity.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has repeatedly said government is desirous of quickly improving Nigeria’s ease of doing business status and by extension stimulating a pro-business, pro-development milieu for trade and commerce.

Source: Guardian