China’s second richest man, Mr Jack Ma said his Alibaba Group
will support four technology entrepreneurs in Nigeria, among the 10
to be supported in Africa.
He did not elaborate.
Jack Ma made this known today, when he visited Nigeria’s
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo in Abuja, ahead of Nigeria Digital
Economy Summit in Abuja.
Jack was also at the head of a large delegation of Chinese
technology entrepreneurs to Nigeria.
The former school teacher, who built China’s biggest e-commerce
platform made very commendable remarks about Nigerian entrepreneurs
and said he had always looked forward to visiting the country.
He said his company was working on promoting technological
innovation in the areas of E-frastructure, Entrepreneurship,
E-governance and Education in Nigeria and other African
countries.
Vice President Osinbajo said the creativity and resourcefulness
of young Nigerians doing incredible things in the technology space
across the country and beyond present great opportunities for
partnerships with global technology giants.
Jack was in Nigeria on the invitation of Vice President Yemi
Osinbajo as part of the Federal Government’s efforts to promote
technological innovation amongst young Nigerians as a means of job
creation.
According to Osinbajo: “Nigeria represents an incredible
opportunity and potential, and we had spoken a few minutes ago
about how Nigeria will in another two decades or so become be the
third largest in terms of population in the entire world. The
largest segment of that population are young people, under 25, who
will be over 60% of that population.
“This is exciting time for us and we are really happy that you
are here and I know the young people and lots of businesses and
entrepreneurs are looking forward to your interaction with them
later today.
“I think you will find very energetic, very creative group of
young men and women and older men and women who are increasingly
interested in entrepreneurship especially digital
entrepreneurship.
“So, the potential is tremendous, it is an incredible potential
that we have. So, we are at a point, and your coming is very
strategic, in our trajectory and in the progress of our
country.
“I think, it is a very important moment and what we are seeing –
a lot of entrepreneurship, a lot of young people who are very
actively engaged in the digital economy at various levels.”
The Vice President spoke about some of the steps already taken
by the Buhari administration to support young Nigerians in the
technology space in building skills and capacities to create
opportunities for themselves and others.
“One of the critical things for us is that with a huge
population and so many people living in the rural area, we have
major issues around financial inclusions for large numbers of our
people. And so making payments or doing financial transactions
across the country presents a challenge which we have to meet.
“The point you made is important, namely, that Government must
provide the infrastructure for purposes of enabling the
entrepreneurs to do more effective business.
“So, that is one of the critical areas for us. We have a
programme that is called Broadband Connectivity for all by 2023
which is basically to see how we can deepen connectivity for
all.
“We are also looking just as you said about e-government, that’s
also crucial because government tends to be viewed with a great
deal of suspicion, nobody is quite sure of what the government is
up to all the time. We think that government can benefit from the
efficiencies that the digital economy provides.
“So we are at a point where we are also looking at how to
revolutionize government businesses so that we can do more in terms
of business with the ordinary citizens, give more information, do
more transactions, get passports and licenses and approvals online
and that kind of thing.”
Speaking specifically about the impact of the Federal
Government’s N-Power programme the Vice President said, “We started
a job programme for young people called N-Power where we engaged
half a million young people.”
“We wanted to build the E-frastructure to make this happen, so
we gathered a group of young entrepreneurs, so they put together
the system which enabled us to engage the half million people.
“We pay them online, we teach them online, we put materials in
open portals for them so that they can actually access these
portals. They also have equipment (like the one I have) which helps
them to train as extension workers for farms. They also work as
teachers, so, we train them also using these open portals and all
others and it proved to be tremendously successful,” he added.
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