The Lagos State Government has urged Nigerians to leverage on technology whilst carrying out their activities in order to enhance productivity.
The Deputy Governor of Lagos State, Dr Obafemi Hamzat stated this during the Junior Chamber International (JCI), Nigeria, Global Digital Economy Summit (GDES) themed; “Digital Transformation: Defining our Success Pillars,” held in Lagos.
Represented by the Commissioner, Ministry of Finance, Lagos State, Dr. Rabiu Olowo, he acknowledged that there was a digital transformation going on in the world currently of which any society that is interested in a sustainable developing economy must embrace technology whilst carrying out its operations.
Hamzat maintained that due to the devastating effect of the Covid-19 pandemic the world had to adopt a new technique of functioning thereby depending more on technology driven solutions to sustain and upscale its activities both at home and at places of work.
He noted that: “The importance of technology towards driving sustainable economic growth can never be over emphasized going by the transformation it has brought to the way we live and carry out our business activities.
“We have seen global economic transactions go from manual to digitalized platforms due to the introduction and infusion of innovative Information technology skills and solutions.”
He further explained that the Nigerian digital economy diagnostic report identifies key challenges and opportunities of leveraging digital economy for a diversified and sustained growth as it provides an assessment on the state of the nation’s digital economy.
“It has been stated that for Nigeria to reap the benefits of a digital economy efforts must be geared towards accelerating improvements in five fundamental pillars of the digital economy which are; digital infrastructure, digital platforms, digital financial services, digital entrepreneurship and digital skills,” he added.
On his part, National President Junior Chamber International, Nigeria, Olawale Bakare said, “everything we do today is driven by technology so it is important to be able to see how we can best leverage on it in order to get optimized results for the benefit of our nation.
“In regards to harnessing and leveraging technology every individual needs to skill up because the problem now is not the lack of jobs rather it is the lack of huge skill gap in the digital economy space. Even if you are not looking to start a career in the technology industry, today every sector utilizes digital platforms and solutions in order to operate, thereby creating the need for everyone to skill up.”
