NITDA Boss Urges Start Ups To Use Innovative Technologies To Solve Local Problems

The director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa has urged startups to adopt disruptive technologies that can solve local and global problems in their operations.

The DG spoke at the 19th edition of the ICTEL Expo, according to a statement issued by Hadiza Umar, head of corporate affairs and external relations, on Thursday in Abuja.

The NITDA boss asked startups to think big while trying to provide solutions, noting that the mindset of solving problems can be expanded to solve global issues.

Inuwa said only technology — a disruptive one — could help them achieve such feats.

“That is the difference between just normal small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and you,” he said.

“We call you startups because you use the power of technology to build your business and become innovation-driven enterprises (IDEs).

“This implies that you start small, thinking of how you can solve a local problem but with the mindset of taking it to the global stage.”

Inuwa said the combination of existing data, unlimited connectivity, and massive processing power, could give tech innovators the leverage to disrupt anything they want to achieve.

“You spend money for research, you spend money to come up with new things while innovation makes money, hence innovation is invention and commercialisation,” he added.

“As startups, you need to be able to pitch your product to a new company, for people to use it to solve problems

“You need to come and disrupt, use technology as a source of inspiration to disrupt businesses.”