By Ojo Shola
The Executive Director of Retail and Digital Business at Wema Bank, Tunde Mabawonku, on Tuesday described Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the future of Nigeria, hence the need for the right investment in it.
The bank executive spoke while remarking on the launch of an initiative to establish a state-of-the-art Information and Communication Technology (ICT) centre in Nigeria, with the groundbreaking event happening in Kagarko, Kagarko Local Government area of Kaduna State.
He said, his financial outfit, in partnership with the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), decided to partner in putting the centre in place as a way of bringing AI hub to young people at the community level.
According to Mabawonku, “The goal was to create a “skillnovate” platform that enables young people to acquire ICT skills, digital skills, and social skills, ultimately adding income to them”.
Mabawonku emphasized that providing the required resources for basic coding and understanding of AI was crucial to making Nigeria an AI hub.
“Ours is to create what we call “skill novate” to empower young people and enable them to ICT skills, digital skills and social skills, and then it adds income to them.
“When people come to the NYSC for the national service, they are largely unsure of what to do within and outside the service.
“So the thinking is that for that one year or thereabouts they will spend during the national service, can they have a centre like this where they can upgrade themselves digitally so by the end of the service, they can do a lot on their own.
“So we are in partnership with the NYSC to create that platform for development for Nigerian youths.
“The best approach to making the country an AI hub is to provide the required resources for the basic coding and basic understanding of AI.
“These days, you don’t need to be a computer guru to learn AI. They are human-created tools that one can just listen to and learn greatly.
“So, we are going to equip the centre and subsequent ones with the best technology so that the young people can learn and start doing things with AI as seen in countries like China and Japan, among others.
“You can see on your social media handles how the service providers are imbuing AI in them.
“The idea of putting this facility here in Kagarko and not Kaduna is that we have noticed that when we are planning development, we always abandon the hinterlands.
“Everybody is concentrating in State capitals. So, working with the NYSC, we chose this area so we can bring the youths around together to learn and fortunately, the location is close to Abuja and Kaduna”, he added.
Middle-Belt Times 