Lagos Startup Week Strengthens Ties with Tech Regulators, Enhances US-Africa Trade

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On the 13th of July, 2024 at the Federal Palace Hotel, Prime Startups, the brain behind Lagos Startup Week, convened tech stakeholders including local and foreign founders, investors, accelerators, regulators, and international observers interested in the African tech ecosystem, to bring its annual week-long event to an impactful close. The closing event which took place in two parts - the networking event and the summit was graced by stakeholders including Tomi Davies, Collaborator-in-Chief, TVC Labs; Bashira Hassan, Policy Advisor to the DG/CEO, NITDA; Victoria Fabunmi, National Coordinator, Office for Nigeria Digital Innovation; Tracey Okoro-Isaac, State Adoption Lead for the Nigerian Startup Act; Arun Venkataram, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Global Markets & the Director General of the U.S. & Foreign Commercial Service; among others.

Kicking off the keynote address, Arun Venkataram, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Global Markets & the Director General of the U.S. & Foreign Commercial Service stated that he was thrilled to have been invited by Prime Startups to join the Lagos Startup Week 2024 and discuss the USA’s collaborative interest in Africa’s tech landscape.

“We are at a pivotal and exciting moment in history, where the intersection of technology and commerce is in a dynamic place that presents boundless opportunities, or limitless as we heard, for collaboration, to solve problems and improve people’s lives. As Nigeria positions itself to be a global leader in the digital space, it is critical that we begin these conversations around how the public and the private sector can collaborate to advance technological innovation sustainably.”

Speaking on how invested the US government is in technological transformation on the African continent, he further said, “From where I sit in the U.S. government, we have been particularly focused on capturing the boundless opportunities presented by the digital economy, for job creation, wealth generation, and youth empowerment; and to help realize this potential, President Biden announced the Digital Transformation With Africa initiative, launched in 2022 to promote the goals of expanding digital access, increasing digital literacy, and strengthening a digital-enabling environment across all of the continent.”

“We are so proud at the Commerce Department to play a leadership role in this effort, including promoting the best-in-class US technology in support of an inclusive African digital ecosystem. I am looking forward on this visit, to advance this initiative with the goal of unlocking the immense potential of Nigeria’s digital economy. If it wasn’t clear before, it is clearer now that America’s future is in Africa’s future, and that Africa’s future is a digital future.” He concluded.

In a similar vein, efforts to strengthen the relationship between the tech ecosystem and the regulators who are critical to the establishment of startups, leveraging technology, and the ease of doing business within Nigeria, yielded success at Lagos Startup Week as Prime Startups teamed up with the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).

In his opening speech at the opening ceremony, the Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, represented by the Director of Corporate Planning and Strategy, NITDA, Dr. Aristotle Onumo disclosed that the purpose and theme of Lagos Startup Week resonate with the thoughts of the government and connects strategically to the roadmap and action plan of the agency.

He said, “Innovation doesn’t happen in isolation, it takes a conglomerate of key growth enablers to ensure that there is a viable tech ecosystem that would be productive, and also meet the needs of the times that we are in. Many do not know the role of Regulators in the place of innovation. Regulators are gatekeepers that provide compliance and maintain a balance between innovation and safety. Hence we plan to create a framework within which people who wish to play a role within the digital economy can be safe.”

Speaking further on how the agency intends to support the tech ecosystem and its players, Dr. Onumo said, “We want to create a good framework for data exchange, digital public infrastructure, engineer a pathway to the creation of over 6,000 technology-enabled jobs through agritech, ensure that about 40% of women can participate in the agency’s digital service offering, establish about 6 technological development zone in Nigeria, promote the use of blockchain technology by developing use cases for new adopters, establish a robust PKI structure that would enable Nigerians’ participation and safety within the transactional context in the digital ecosystem, and nurture an innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem by efficiently implementing the Nigerian Startup Act so that all can benefit from the incentives being provided by the Federal Government.”

At the closing ceremony, in an exclusive panel session hosted in partnership with the Office for Nigeria Digital Innovation of NITDA, Tracey Okoro-Isaac, State-adoption lead for the Nigerian Startup Act, dedicated quality time to expound on the Act and the incidents that led to its passage. She said, “The Nigerian Startup Act came at the intersection of disruption and displacement. We had gotten to a point where the government saw nothing unique about the startups that flooded the ecosystem, and this had influenced several harsh policies and regulations that affected the growth of these startups. We needed to do something, but we needed the government by our side. So we began the big-tent approach, which led us to commission a stakeholder mapping of everybody that was required to win at each step and brought them together in a group.”

Further speaking to how these players brought the government to play an active role in the burgeoning ecosystem that is seen today, Okoro-Isaac said, “While we understood the government’s hesitation about the sudden disruption taking over the business landscape and the displacement it had caused in the traditional workforce, we also needed them to see the advantage and introduce regulations that would ensure the best interest of all. We found a middle ground to make sure that while tech stakeholders are supporting and nurturing innovation, the government was able to create an enabling environment to prepare for displacement.”

Victoria Fabunmi, National Coordinator, Office for Nigeria Digital Innovation, speaking to the implementation of the Act, and the reignition of stakeholders’ confidence in this Act, maintained that quite a lot of people are still not aware of the Nigerian Startup Act and its composition.

“How do people take advantage of something that they have no idea of? This is a major problem and has cut out our work for us in terms of expanding touch points for stakeholders' understanding and leveraging.

Today, a platform has been created to aggregate core players like Angel investors, venture capitalists, startups, innovation hubs, accelerators, and advisors; register and verify them. Now, because the awareness doesn’t exist, the uptake or engagement with the act that establishes this platform has been low.”

Speaking about NITDA’s role in increasing uptake and engagement, she said, “At NITDA, we are responsible for engaging the national council which is a critical component of the act, and ensuring that we (everyone in the ecosystem) can create an enabling environment for ourselves.”

Bringing the discourse to an end, Fabunmi disclosed that success for her office would come in the form of positive engagement in the Consultative Forum - a group that convenes appointed officials representing the interests of members across the ecosystem and integrated into a council to make decisions on policies for enabling business environment, funding, e.t.c and kick off implementation. She urged stakeholders present at the summit to read and digest the act, and also do their best to collaborate with NITDA and the government, in strengthening the ecosystem.Bringing its famous week-long event to an end for 2024, and setting the pace for the corporate entity’s plans for celebrating ten years of Lagos Startup Week in Nigeria, Prime Startups Co-founder, Olumide Olayinka stated that Lagos Startup Week had made an incredible impact on the tech landscape since its inception nine years ago.

He said, “For the past nine years, we’ve been cultivating Lagos as the powerhouse for innovation in Africa. When we started the Lagos Startup Week nine years ago, the startup scene was very much at a nascent stage. As organizers of Lagos Startup Week, we at Prime Startups are dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship ecosystems across Africa. It’s no wonder how some of the founding members of the Lagos Startup Week embodied this collective vision and built some of the continent’s fastest-growing startups. This makes us proud and inspires us to keep the collaborative spirit alive.”

He went on to add that the theme for 2024 was inspired by the question, “What would you do, what would you build if you had no limits?” Thanking the ecosystem leaders for converging for Lagos Startup Week, he announced the theme for 2025 tagged, “Building for the Next Decade”. The event came to a close with a networking event that provided a huge opportunity for guests to connect with the influencers of the most valuable startup ecosystems in Africa, and access Venture Capital professionals, startup founders, and policymakers in the nation’s fast-growing tech scenes.

Source: Legit.ng

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