BOI Harps on Technology Devt to Sustain Economic Growth

The Bank of Industry (BOI) has stated that for Nigeria to sustain its current economic growth, the nation must seek ways to develop and address its technological needs to catch up with the rest of the world.

‎The Managing Director, BOI, Mr. Rasheed Olaoluwa noted that there is a direct relationship between technology and development, maintaining that to achieve an accelerated economic growth‎, Nigeria must pay serious and urgent attention to technology inorder to maintain its leadership position in terms of economic growth.

‎The BOI boss made this statement while receiving delegates from the Nigerian Academy of Engineers, noting that  the rest of the ‎world was moving very rapidly in terms of technology where there are lots of things happening in robotics, customising medicine for individuals according to their genetic composition.

‎"Lots of technology advancements are happening in artificial integlligence, there is a lot happening in semi conductors, micro chips and even ligtings. These are all development in terms of technology  which helps in making work more efficient, reducing cost and generally making life better," he said.
‎
In his words, "We at BOI believe that there is a need to rethink our strategy for development. We have been pursuing technology transfer for far too long ‎ and it has not given us sufficient amount of result because no country will willingly give you their technology. We need to build our own crop if scirntists and engineers that will be well supported to come out with theit own bright ideas and innovation."
‎
According to him, the way to go is what he described as reverse engineering which would afford bright and young engineers to disassemble established technologies to ‎have first hand information and opportunity about the composition of such technologies.
‎
"They need to do this independently. This happens everyday ‎in China, Korea and other parts of the world. I think we should also go in this direction. If we must sustain our current economic growth into the future, we need to take technology very seriously," he added.‎
‎
"We have discussed about the role of engineering and technology in terms of the impact on our development as a nation. It is clear that there is a direct correlation between technology and development. The more technology you have as a country, the faster the development  of your economy. We have discussed areas of partnerships in terms of linking industries to centres of innovation such as the academia, the research and development institutions, practicing engineers and the likes," he stressed.