To implement what can cause a positive change to the development of Africa’s Digital Economy dreams, Programos Software Group and UN ICT4SIDS Partnership (#8005) launched the Innovationbed Africa Rapid DTAP2030 Intervention.
This stemmed from a formal endorsement of Programos Foundation’s contributions to the public request by WITSA and UN-GAID for innovators around the world to join in development and implementation of the UN-GAID SPACE eNabler initiative in 2010 as member ICT4SIDS SPACE4ICT Working Group. Programos Foundation has been reported along other international organizations who have consolidated efforts at building a network for integrated global community as shown in diagram below at the United Nations Headquarters, New York:
ICT4SIDS SPACE4ICT Partnership (#8005) metamorphosed into digital services DTAP: Digital Transformation Advisors and Planners Tool-kits – Use of Digital Technologies for eCommerce, eBusiness and eGovernment space to gain development maturity (Industry 0.0 to Industry 4.0) and building SMART collaborative Hubs that impact local regions in developing countries with DTAPTM partnerships – meaning Digital Transformation Advisory and Planning e-services implementations.
What is DTAP2030TM
Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. This reshaping of business is digital transformation.
The COVID-19 pandemic not only took a toll on the health and lives of the people but also drastically affected economy. The organizations and businesses that were not up for the challenge suffered severely. ‘Brick & Mortar’ style systems are becoming obsolete and digital transformation to meet new challenges and to make the businesses immune and resilient to COVID-like situations is no more optional!!!
Programos Foundation pilot work presentation of SPACE Factory at the I4th Infopoverty World Conference, l0th-11th April 2014, United Nations Headquarters, New York, US.
What potential DTAP-2030 innovators should know:
- What is a digital transformation strategy?
- What is a business process pattern and why is it important?
- What is a value chain and why is it important?
- For my organization at a given location, what is the digital strategy I should use?
- What business functions will need to be digitized?
- Which digital technologies will drive this transformation?
- What will be the key promises (benefits)?
- What will be the key risks (costs)?
- What are the policies needed to support the proposed strategy?
- How can these strategies and policies be implemented?
Our Partnership Background:
• Dr Amjad Umar, Director and Chief Architect (ICT4SIDS Partnership), Professor and Director of ICT Program, Harrisburg University; Adjunct Professor of Telecommunications, University of Pennsylvania; Fulbright Senior Specialist on ICT, • Robert St Thomas, President, GTG Services; IBM Corporation (retired); Senior Advisor, ICT4SIDS; • Dr John Kenerson, Director, World Hypertension Action Group (Whag); Senior Advisor, ICT4SIDS; Co-Founder, Colleagues in Care; •Dr John Steffens, Assistant Vice Provost Emeritus and Executive Director, Public Service Institute, The University of Oklahoma, • NGE Solutions Team (Kamran Khalid, Nauman Javed, Adnan Javed, Hannan Dawood, Abdul Qadir, and Arslan Dawood)
We greatly appreciate the support from Harrisburg University (Management and Technical Staff). Emmanuel Amos, Chief Software Architect/Ceo, Programos Software Group (Nigeria), Paul Haye (Jamaica), John Mwaipopo (Tanzania), and many other Points of Contacts (POCs) and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
A Conceptual View of SPACE
Framework of DTAP4Nigeria: How we link up with the CORE SPACE resource tool to re-innovate Nigeria
Government Leaders (Multi-Disciplinary) Forum on Innovation IGLFI 2021
DTAP4Africa:
Smart Cities Innovation for Senior Workforce of State Govt MDAs and Creative Youths
We are indeed appreciative of all executive leadership that have reached out to Innovationbed Africa (Programos Foundation) and do show they are not unmindful of need to pay attention to Strategic Planning and Digital Transformation in the course of their administrative services to indigents and society at large. In an uncommon circumstance, we have received an excellent recognition by the government of Zamfara State under His Excellency Dr Bello Mohammed (MON) the Executive Governor of Zamfara State and the Senior Special Assistant on ICT, Hon Mohammed Tambura who invited us to collaborate in a recent 2-day Campus Innovation capacity development workshops that hosted a 1000+ students across the country virtually. An event that conscripted numerous international and local experts who have been past winners of the prestigious United Nations World Summit Awards, seizing the power of the internet, to share their life experiences with the young males and females of diverse disciplines and across different years of study in universities, polytechnics, colleges of education etc in Nigeria.
Why this MDAs Innovation workshop to State governments’ workforce?
What does a government stand to gain if it authorizes mass participation by its workforce irrespective of ministry, departments and agencies MDAs and creative youths come October 1st, 2021 and on an ongoing awareness programme?
Most of the developing countries need to rapidly launch several ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) services especially in healthcare, education, economic development, public welfare, and public safety.
Unfortunately, the failure rates of ICT projects are very high in developing countries (around 80%) due to skill shortages and re-invention of the wheel. To compound the problem, these segments also lack the financial resources to hire expensive consulting services with appropriate know-how. This workshop presents to them an innovative computer aided consulting environment that is addressing this perplexing dilemma, accelerating the adoption of ICT services, and providing entrepreneurship opportunities in developing countries and under-served sectors.
What are we recommending to state governments in Nigeria ?
DTAP4Nigeria: Smart Collaborating Digital Hubs and a Smart Global Village for Rapid and Massive Implementation of UN SDGs: An Innovative Computer Aided Planning Methodology and Toolkit. Programos Foundation from Nigeria has contributed to its global review for Africa and in particular West Africa and Nigeria as #DTAP4Nigeria and #SVC4Nigeria since its recommendation in 2010 to developing countries.
In addition to the actual Smart Hubs, the few Pilot work outcomes shown on this link and presented at the Infopoverty World Conference, United Nations Headquarters, New York, can serve as testimonials of the rigorous work done by Amos Emmanuel, Founder, Programos Foundation from Nigeria on the SPACE Factory Readiness that these are real projects made from Nigeria. The status reports (http://ict4sids.com/projdoc/Nigeria%20Project-Concept.pdf)
Introducing UN ICT4SIDS
ICT4SIDS Partnership (#8005) was formed in the 2014 Samoa Conference by a small team of researchers and engineers, led by Dr Amjad Umar. Dr Umar was an Adjunct Professor of Systems and Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania at that time and had previously started a research project on Computer Aided Planning at Bell Labs for small businesses. We started by using our computer aided planning toolkit to quickly form the ICT Hubs suggested by the Samoa Pathway. The toolkit has been significantly expanded to address the most difficult challenges raised by SDGs and now for the Urban Agenda.
NOTE: All References are Annotated for convenience
OVERVIEW INFORMATION
[1] “Smart Hubs for Rapid and Massive Implementation of SDGs” (http://ict4sids.com/newdoc/ICT4SIDS-002-Overview-March2019.pdf) – Note: this is essentially an expanded version of the Good Practices Submission with graphics and better explanations.
[2] UN ICT4SIDS Partnership, UN Registered Partnership No:8005, Website: http://ict4sids.com. Note: this site, heavily supported through video clips, has tremendous information of value to this report.
[3] SPACE – A Computer Aided Planning, Engineering & Management Environment, developed by NGE Solutions. Website: http://space4ict.com. Note: Also review [8, 9] for research papers on SPACE.
[4] UN High Level Platform Forum (HLPF) Entry: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/partnership/?p=8005. Note: This link shows the Yearly Progress Reports of ICT4SIDS Partnership, since 2015.
[5] “Indian Ocean Quick Status Report” from Vittorio Cocco, ICT4SIDS Representative in the Indian Ocean”, Feb 25, 2019, http://ict4sids.com/projdoc/statusreport2018.pdf
RECENT RESEARCH PAPERS– Published and Under Review for Publication
[6] Umar, A., “Smart Collaborating Hubs and a Smart Global Village – An Alternative Perspective on Smart Islands, Towns and Cities”, IEEE Conference on Technology and Engineering Management, June 2018. Link: http://ict4sids.com/newdoc/IEEE-TEMS%20SmartHubs-Final.pdf
[7] Umar, A., “Computer Aided Planning, Engineering and Management of Minigrids in Developing Countries”, short research working paper, Sept 2018. Link: http://ict4sids.com/newdoc/Computer-Aided-Planning-for-Minigrids.pdf
[8] Umar, A., “Computer Aided Strategic Planning for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals”, International Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, ISSN: 2394-3661, Vol-4, Issue-12, December 2017. Link: http://ict4sids.com/newdoc/IJEAS-SPACE4SDGs-Published-Final.pdf
[9] Umar, A., and Zordan, A., “Enterprise Ontologies for Planning and Integration of eBusiness”, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, May 2009, Vol. 56, No. 2, pp. 352-371.
RELEVANT BOOKS (Published and Under Review)
[10] Umar, A., “Computer Aided Strategic Planning for Digital Enterprises”, Ingram Publications, Target Publication: Sept 2019
[11] Umar, A., “Computer Aided Architecture and Integration of Smart Enterprises”, Ingram Publications, Target Publication: Dec 2019
IMPORTANT VIDEOS AND INFORMATION LINKS:
[12] What is a Smart Hub: 3 Minute Video Clip (http://ict4sids.com/ved14.html)
[13] How Does Collaboration Help a Smart Global Village: 4 Minute Video Clip (http://ict4sids.com/ved4.html)
[14] What is Our Computer Aided Methodology: 5 Minute Video Clip (http://ict4sids.com/ved6.html)
[15] What is the SPACE Factory: 2 Minute Video Clip (http://ict4sids.com/ved9.html)
[16] SDG Advisor: Video Clip (http://ict4sids.com/ved7.html), Link to the Tool (http://space4ict.com/pages/sdgsadv.aspx)
[17] ICT4SIDS Partnership: Sample Pilot Projects, URL: http://ict4sids.com/proj.html
[18] Global Entrepreneurship Zone for All (GEZA): URL: http://ngegeza.com/
[19] “Nigeria: Young Entrepreneurs are Going Back to the Countryside From Large Cities.” https://www.trouw.nl/home/jonge-ondernemers-in-nigeria-vaarwel-stropdas-en-airco-hallo-platteland~aa6c8c48/.
Objective of the practice
Our objective is rapid implementation of SDGs at a massive scale by deploying inexpensive smart hubs that provide low cost but high impact SDG services to under-served populations [1]. By definition, a smart hub is a center of activity, supported by a set of powerful portals, that provide location specific services of high value to its users. A smart hub may be totally virtual (i.e., located in the cloud) or a physical building with access to the hub portals. The following four distinguishing features of our work make it an effective response to the SDG/2030 and the Urban Agendas:
I: SMART HUBS TO ADDRESS THE BASIC CHALLENGES: Each smart hub addresses many SDG challenges by providing highly specialized region and population specific low cost and high impact services in health, education, public safety, public welfare and other vital sectors. Specifically, each Smart Hub supports the following powerful portals so that no one is left behind [12]:
• Administration Portal that has prefabricated plug-ins for collaboration, business intelligence, observatories, decision support, security and project management.
• End-User Portal that directly supports SDG specific activities of the end-users (e.g., patients to get healthcare help, farmers to launch e-agriculture initiatives, and children in remote areas to get basic education)
• A Capacity Building Portal to educate the Hub-Masters to become successful entrepreneurs
II: SMART GLOBAL VILLAGE (SGV) FOR REGIONAL GROWTH THROUGH COLLABORATIVE HUBS: These smart hubs are designed to collaborate with each other to form a Smart Global Village (SGV) for the Under-served Populations. An SGV consists of smart collaborating hubs located in small islands, small towns and isolated communities. Members of an SGV can [13]:
• Collaborate with each other and also with a Global Center for HelpDesk capabilities
• Operate eco-systems with entrepreneurs from different countries on different topics
• Support SDGs plus the UN Urban Agenda by gradually transforming regions
III: COMPUTER AIDED PLANNING METHODOLOGY FOR RAPID & MASSIVE IMPLEMENTATION: This methodology is based on free pilot projects so that the poorest populations and young entrepreneurs can participate. The most innovative aspect of our methodology is that it uses a “Hub Factory” to produce a complete smart hub in about an hour, create a community center in about a day, a village in two days, and a regional SGV in about a week (Smart Solomon was created in a week!). This acceleration changes the dynamics of our projects [14].
IV: ACADEMIC RESEARCH TO DEVELOP AN ADVANCED “HUB FACTORY” TO QUICKLY PRODUCE HIGHLY SPECIALIZED AND SOPHISTICATED SMART HUBS: We have developed a Hub Factory that supports the aforementioned computer aided planning methodology. This factory, called SPACE (Strategic Planning, Architecture, Controls and Education) uses an extensive array of latest developments in “additive” manufacturing, AI, Big Data, gamification, business patterns, technology patterns, and management patterns [5]. SPACE is a research prototype that is being extended and enriched because of its use in deploying and managing the growing SGV (60 hubs in 15 countries at present). Several research papers have been written about SPACE [6, 7, 8, 9]. Key stakeholders and partnerships
The key stakeholders in our Partnership are:
• Beneficiaries: The respondents to our Pilot Projects (advertised on the http://ict4sids.com) are young entrepreneurs, NGOs, Teachers from Community Colleges, mayors of small towns, community workers, and govt officials. The respondents go through an interview before they are assigned as POCs (Points of Contact).
• Implementers are members of NGE Solutions – a startup
• Partners are Harrisburg University, IBM (donor of a machine) and a large number of subject matter experts from industry, academia and governments Implementation of the Project/Activity
As stated previously, our main objective is to quickly identify and launch low cost but high impact services in health, education, public safety, public welfare and other vital sectors for any location anywhere in the world.
The major challenges we face are:
• Where exactly should a hub be located for maximum benefit to the community?
• What type of low cost and high impact service(s) should be provided for the area?
• What business strategy should be used and what will be the ICT and energy infrastructure?
• What are the security, privacy and policy issues that must be addressed?
• What are the needed project management and governance aspects for the hubs?
• How can the large number of hubs be implemented quickly and inexpensively?
Due to these and other complex issues, the failure rates of ICT projects of this nature are very high – around 80% in developing countries [21, 22]. To address these challenges, we developed a computer aided methodology that is based on free pilot projects. In the first stage of this methodology, we invite any potential user to initiate a free pilot project by submitting a short proposal that specifies the objective of the proposed hub and the target location (preferably SIDS and LDCs but we serve under-served populations anywhere in the world, include USA). An SDG Advisor tool (part of SPACE) helps the users to assess their needs and determine which SDG services will be needed in the proposed hub. Specifically, the SDG Advisor [16] conducts a quick feasibility study by asking the following questions and then helps a user to select and launch low cost but high impact smart hubs:
• What is the objective of the proposed pilot project?
• What is the status of the target country/region for SDGs of interest?
• What type of hub services could improve the needed status?
• Which services are low cost but high benefit within the local context?
Based on this quick analysis, and a short skype interview, a hub vision is clarified and a pilot project is initiated by appointing a user Point of Contact (POC) who also serves as the hub master. The methodology, explained later, then uses an innovative Computer Aided Planning tool, called SPACE, to quickly generate a highly specialized Smart Hub for the site selected by the POC. The POC is then trained to use the generated hub as an entrepreneurship opportunity and works with our team to refine and launch the Smart Hub for public use. In the Launch stage, all hubs are automatically “registered” in the Collaboration Matrix and also in the Smart Global Village. The Pilot Project concludes based on a detailed plan for future deployments with expansions, management and governance considerations. Please visit (http://ict4sids.com/methodology.html) for additional details on this implementation methodology.
Please recall that each Smart Hub has an Administrative Portal that has extensive monitoring and governance capabilities to enable the POCs to become successful entrepreneurs.
Additional information about our implementation approach can be found in [1, 2, 3] Results/Outputs/Impacts
Our methodology and the SPACE Factory have been used for rapid generation of more than 60 smart hubs in 15 countries that span Asia, Africa, North America and Small Islands. The Sample Smart Hubs Site (http://ict4sids.com/proj.html) displays only a few interesting results of our work such as the following:
• Healthcare and Education Centers in Pakistan, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Bangladesh
• A Fisheries Center in Sri Lanka, a Solar Energy eMarketplace for Nigeria, and an e-Agriculture Center for Togo
• A sustainable tourism network in Maldives and Solomon Islands, and Disaster Management Centers in Timore Leste and the Solomons
• A Domestic Violence Center in the Republic of Georgia
• Smart towns in Pakistan (Lahore) and the Solomon Island (Honiara)
• A large scale Smart SIDS initiative with initial focus on the Solomons
• Examination of hypertension data from Haiti, Peru and El Salvador
In addition to the actual Smart Hubs, the few Pilot Invitations shown on this page can serve as testimonials that these are real projects. The status reports (http://ict4sids.com/projdoc/statusreport2018.pdf) and (http://ict4sids.com/projdoc/Nigeria%20Project-Concept.pdf) provide additional testimonials of our work in the Indian Ocean and Nigeria.
This sample site shows the diversity of topics (almost all SDGs) and the locations (almost all continents) covered by Smart Hubs. The key outputs and results of our work so far are:
· The approach of highly focused pilot projects (duration: 3 months) works very well — we quickly learn what really works and also provide educational and entrepreneurship opportunities for the POCs.
· The POCs of each hub are required to communicate and collaborate with at least 3 other hubs as part of the training program. They initially exchange educational materials and lessons learned but later start exchanging other vital information such as evacuation procedures in case of a disaster and digital marketing approaches and experiences for cottage industries.
· The Smart Global Village (SGV) of underserved populations collaborating with each other is giving us unprecedented opportunities to collect, combine, and analyze highly valuable data from very diverse populations from different sectors living in different parts of the world.
· The Global Center of the Village, located in USA, can remotely monitor the disaster resilience capabilities of smart hubs located anywhere in the world.
For further insights, let us look at the Smart Solomons Project (videoclip: https://youtu.be/1eJGqGh7ruk), and smart Solomon site (Link:http://ict4sids.com/Solomon.html) that is attempting to transform the Solomons into a smart island by 2020. The Smart Solomons Home Page supports eight Hubs at the national level (health, education, disaster management, energy management, e-agriculture, e-commerce, entrepreneurship, and tourism), a Smart Honiara Hub to support the city of Honiara as a smart town, and a community center for AreAre rural area for health, education, and tourism. Collaboration scenarios include a tourism hub in AreAre collaborating with micro-entrepreneurship and micro financing hubs in Pakistan, Maldives and Harrisburg. Also, blood pressure readings at the AreAre Center can be sent to the National Healthcare Center in Solomons and the Global Healthcare Center located at Harrisburg. These centers can also collaborate on medical supplies [13]. Enabling factors and constraints
Our main success factors are: a) clear vision of smart hubs that collaborate with each other to form a Smart Global Village (SGV), b) a Computer Aided Methodology based on a SPACE Factory to produce smart collaborating hubs and SGVs quickly and inexpensively, and c) Financial limitations as a driver for innovation.
SMART GLOBAL VILLAGE FOR ENTREPRENEURS: Entrepreneurship is the key to economic growth, especially in developing countries. For example, a UNESCAPE Report [20] highlights the growth of e-commerce entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia. Based on first hand experience, we have found that each hub is a potential entrepreneurship opportunity and thus our methodology trains each POC to be an entrepreneur by using a hub. For example, young nursing graduates can use healthcare hubs to launch healthcare centers, farmers or their family members with good education can launch farmer education centers, and guesthouse networks such as GAM can trigger multiple entrepreneurship opportunities in tourism and hospitality business. We are promoting SGV as a global eco system for entrepreneurship that supports creative opportunities by the Hub Masters at diverse locations with different backgrounds to collaborate with other entrepreneurs . We have some preliminary but highly promising results so far. Based on that, we have developed an Entrepreneurship Portal that supports hub-based training and education [18].
COMPUTER AIDED METHODOLOGY AND SPACE FACTORY: This methodology quickly identifies and launches low cost but high impact smart hubs in all SDG related sectors for any location anywhere in the world so that no one is left behind. We are also conducting serious academic research at present to transform SPACE into an advanced “Hub Factory” that can quickly produce highly specialized and sophisticated smart hubs at a massive scale to form highly creative SGVs. We are using a mixture of additive manufacturing, AI, deep learning, Big Data analytics and post processing techniques to significantly improve the smart hubs. SPACE behaves as a “factory” with the following capabilities [15, 8, 9]:
• Patterns Repository contains an extensive library of business, technology and management patterns that are used to populate the Smart Hub Portals. For example, our business patterns repository contains around 200 patterns that span 12 industry sectors. These patterns can be also combined into complex “bundles” to represent offices, community centers, and enterprises.
• Games and Simulations support strategic analysis, ICT planning, interagency integrations, project management and governance activities of the methodology.
• Planning Tools (e.g., strategic and detailed planners), advisory systems (e.g., the SDG Advisor), and other specialized tools (e.g., entrepreneurship portal) that systematically guide the users through various decisions in strategic planning, architectures, integration, acquisition, security, governance and project management activities.
FINANCIAL LIMITATIONS AS A DRIVER FOR INNOVATION: Financial limitations became our driver for innovation because we could not hire large technical staff to build, customize and support large number of highly specialized smart hubs to support all the SDGs. So, we decided to keep a small team and are focusing on the SPACE Factory to “manufacture” smart hubs — a highly interesting area of future research Sustainability and replicability
We have a sustainable business model that is based on a small team with heavy focus on computer aided planning, engineering and management of Smart Collaborating Hubs. We are using the lessons learned and insights gained from the Partnership to operate a successful software development, consulting and training firm (http://ngesolutions.com). The firm is providing tangible business opportunities to young entrepreneurs who want to use these hubs to form telemedicine centers, ecommerce centers for cottage industries, training centers for farmers, tourism networks, domestic businesses for women, and emarkets for solar energy (see the samples displayed on http://ict4sids.com/proj.html).
Based on the insights gained through numerous hands-on experiments, we feel that significant improvements in rural/urban transformations can be achieved through a set of collaborative smart hubs as a possible alternative to large scale smart cities initiatives as stressed in the UN Urban Agenda. In terms of cost/efficiency implications, our approach is based on low cost but high impact services. As stated previously, we offer free pilot projects and then provide complete technical support and training of hub masters at $50 USD per month per hub.
Plans for extending the practice more widely and encouraging its adoption in other contexts are:
• We are reducing the duration of free pilot projects from 3 months to 1 month starting March 1. The reason for this reduction is that by now our team has gained enough of experience and the SPACE platform has become efficient enough so that we can get the free pilot projects done in 1 month. This allows our team to triple our projects without increasing the team and costs.
• Instead of replicating one hub (e.g., a hypertension clinic) lets say in Africa, we keep enriching the SPACE Factory and diversifying the geographic locations so that we can cover more SDGs in more SIDS and LDC locations as displayed on http://ict4sids.com/proj.html page.
We also intend to pursue the following areas of practical research to further improve our methodology and the SPACE Factory:
• What would be the exact tradeoffs between smart city solutions based on gradual implementation of smart hubs in selected neighborhoods versus large centralized solutions for the entire city.
• How can the success rate of pilot projects be further improved. Almost 80% of our projects are successful – the main failures happen in the last Phase due to the lack of financial resources to the young entrepreneurs who want to be hub masters. We are seeking innovative models to fund $10k per hub as seed money for the entrepreneurs who are already well trained to run a small business by using a smart hub.
• How can the current SPACE Factory be expanded for massive generation of almost a million smart hubs to support more than 3.5 billion under-served people by using the next generation of digital technologies.
• What type of unique collaboration scenarios and protocols will be needed to capture the global entrepreneurship ecosystems (e.g., eccommerce) in an SGV. For example, will a light weight NIEM (National Information Exchange Model) be needed for developing countries Conclusions
Finding solutions that address massive needs of almost 3.5 Billion people — as captured in the UN SDGs — is a daunting task. We have presented an architectural vision of a smart global village (SGV) that is based on smart collaborating hubs to serve these populations. These hubs provide inexpensive and highly specialized services in health, education, public safety, public welfare, energy and other vital sectors for the populations that are being left out of the digital revolution. We have identified the key challenges faced by massive implementation of smart collaborating hubs and developed a computer aided methodology plus the needed “SPACE Factory” that attempts to answer these challenges.
The result of our effort is a smart global village, consisting of several smart hubs, that is currently operational and is actually being used to help developing countries and small to medium businesses make progress towards SDGs. In addition, this village is being used extensively to support graduate courses and professional education in computer aided strategic planning and enterprise architectures and integration.
We have learned the following invaluable lessons in this project:
• As mentioned previously, every hub is a potential entrepreneurial opportunity for young entrepreneurs. Widespread availability of smart inexpensive hubs focusing on different topics with automatically plugged-in capabilities for collaboration and business intelligence could spark innovative entrepreneurial products and services. We are hoping that these digital innovations happen in remote areas and isolated populations that are being left out of the digital revolution.
• Women can find more entrepreneurship opportunities to run hubs as small businesses from their homes in backward areas where women cannot work outside their homes.
• Interactions and collaborations between different hub owners on different topics in different parts of the world can be of great value in discovering, understanding, and analyzing various large scale scenarios in a Smart Global Village that need future research.
• Business continuity planning (BCP) for small hubs is an active area of technology planning and transfer between many hub masters, at the time of this writing. This is automatically leading to disaster resilience in remote areas. Other common areas of interest will emerge as we gain more knowledge and insights with the rapidly growing SGV. These “bottom up” developments could lead to valuable results.
Our approach could also be used to support the UN Urban Agenda because the local smart hubs could provide the needed services to people living in rural areas to reduce the global urbanization trends. Our hypothesis is that people living in rural areas would prefer not to move to the expensive, congested and crime ridden cities if needed services are available at local hubs. For example, young entrepreneurs in Nigeria are going back to the countryside from Large Cities for a better life [19] . In addition, smart hubs can be used to provide needed services to a few neighbour-hoods of a large city and thus can gradually implement a large smart city plan instead of a centralized “one size fits all” solution. Other sources of information
As a regional Ministry, register for the UN ICT4SIDS Project implementation 2021/2022 to digitally transform your community administration positively.
Engagement Downloads:
- coming soon as downloads
A compilation of Programos Foundation works on the UN ICT4SIDS in Nigeria.
Programos InnovationBed (ICT4SIDSNigeria Digital Hubs) – Think NEXT Innovations! Organization Name*: (PROGRAMOS FOUNDATION): Organization Type*: [Nonprofit/NGO] Website*: InnovationBed.africa ORGANIZATION ADDRESS Country*: [Nigeria] Location*: 9, Biodun Opeifa Street, Off Freedom Way, Itedo-Estate, Lekki, Victoria Island City*: Lekki, Victoria Island State/Region*: Lagos State Zip Code/Postal Code*:23401 In which country is your organization legally incorporated?* [Nigeria] Does your organization have less than 50 employees?* [Yes] UN SPACE4Nigeria Contact Information Primary Point of Contact*(Founder/CEO/Principal Investigator)Secondary Point of Contact 1. Secondary Point of Contact : Prof Amjad Umar, Lead Consultant, ICT4SIDS 2. Senior Project Consultant: Amos Emmanuel, ICT4SIDSNigeria Coordinator. Regional Interns from 10 states trained freely by Programos Foundation in Nigeria:   UN SPACE4Nigeria Project Country Pilot 2021-2025: Introduction Nigeria is an African country on the Gulf of Guinea, has many natural landmarks and wildlife reserves. Protected areas such as Cross River National Park and Yankari National Park have waterfalls, dense rainforest, savanna and rare primate habitats. One of the most recognizable sites is Zuma Rock, a 725m-tall monolith outside the capital of Abuja that’s pictured on the national currency – the Naira.Other Summary: Nigeria which is a country in West Africa and generally called the ‘Giant of Africa’ is in a democracy.President: Muhammadu Buhari Capital: FCT, AbujaDialing code: +234Population: 190.9 million (2017) World Bank The UN SDG Action Campaign helps build multi-stakeholder partnerships to support a transparent dialogue between decision makers and their constituencies, especially the most marginalized and vulnerable populations. It works to leverage cutting-edge communication technologies, to show the human story behind development challenges and create deeper empathy and understanding between decision-makers and their people. Finally, it uses data, technology and innovation to empower people with the knowledge and tools to become actively involved in supporting their governments with SDG implementation and to continue to involve as many people as possible in the decision-making process.The UN SDG Action campaign has engaged numerous interns at the different stages of our work to assist with SDG campaign outreach and engagement tools and activities of SPACE4Nigeria by Programos Foundation and is numerous partners and collaborators. The partners’ network has contributed immensely to our work and Programos make good to mention in appreciation the UN World Summit Awards (ICNM Media, Austria), Global Digital Foundation, Headquartered in Brussels, Tech 4 Good (Isreal), Information Technology Association of Nigeria ITAN, World Information and Technology Service Alliance, WITSA, WSA Expert Network across the globe, ITRI, Taipei, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, NGE Solutions, USA, UN ICT4SIDS/SPACE Working Group members, Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria, ISPON, Institute of Information Management, IIM, Nigeria Computer Society, NCS, Campus2Corporate India, and all Programos Software Clientelle User-network. The United Nations adopted 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs in 2015 from the MDGs previously implemented. The SPACE eNabler initiative is a Data Base project for ICT4SIDS Partnership led by Amjad Umar (Professor of ICTs, Harrisburg University) who with the team promoted the blueprint for the rapid adoption of the SAMOA pathway and the attainment of the SDGs in order to extend the use of ICTs as much as possible in rural, regional and national areas to take advantage of all the resources in the fields of telemedicine and e-governance in developing countries.This was a welcome idea to Programos Foundation as our management’s existing research and development programmes warranted keying into the reviewed initiative immediately. Programos Foundation had earlier in 2010 at the United Nations Headquarters, New York applied and was invited to participate into the UN SPACE (Strategic Planning Architecture, Control and Education) eNabler initiative Working Group by the Global Alliance for ICT Development, UN-GAID and World Information and Technology Services Alliance, WITSA. Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) are recognized as very important tools for delivering public services and supporting progress towards the SDGs. Specifically, digital innovations are needed to ameliorate the persistent digital divide and other unique challenges facing the developing countries. We are primarily focusing on the following innovative solution approaches in the ICT4SIDS Partnership: Smart hubs for different SDGs that collaborate with each other over very diverse networksAn SDG Advisor that helps the countries to assess their SDG indicators quickly and select appropriate courses of action for rapid implementations, typically within an hourA Computer Aided Planner that generates location specific solutions for all countries within a day A Decision Support Dashboard for monitoring and managing the smart hubs remotely An implementation methodology that combines all these tools with capacity building opportunities for young entrepreneurs Specifically, the smart hubs are supported by powerful portals that provide highly specialized region-and-population specific services for SDGs and also fully support the vision of widely distributed information hubs as specified in the Samoa Pathway Declaration. The InnovationBed initiative are a set of smart hubs which must have the ability to learn and adjust based on the situation and be designed to collaborate with each other for rapid regional growth – and this is being researched as we develop and review with the lead partners at the ICT4SIDS. Our work approach of using smart hubs and the associated toolset can ameliorate the digital divide in Nigeria and significantly accelerate the progress towards the SDGs. ICT4SIDS Nigeria pilot project is intended to expand training and decision support services across the country within 2019/2020+. The goal of the InnovationBed Nigeria (ICT4SIDS Partnership) is to offer diverse array of digital innovation opportunities to Nigerian youths and primarily to narrow the digital gap that keeps widening despite many efforts of both private and public sector players. Programos had identified and sealed necessary partnerships to the vision which include the UN World Summit Awards’ WSA and WSYA initiatives where, as Country Expert on the network and Grand Jury Member, we have scouted local networks, hubs and ecosystems to discover and showcase Nigerian web and mobile innovation for 10 years within 8 core economic categories and we are proud to report that Nigeria has done very well on the global scale annually. The evaluation categories of the WSA being:Open Government & Citizen Engagement – influencing innovation capacity development in government services, open data, democratic participation processE-business and Commerce – (innovative services, security, finance, marketing)E-Learning and Education – (knowledge, science, skills)Health and Well-being – (medical care, sport, lifestyle)Culture and Tourism – (heritage, entertainment, subcultures)Inclusion and empowerment – (diversity, gender, justice, human rights)Smart settlement and Urbanization – (mobility, productive work, sustainable living)Environment and Green Energy – (climate, sustainable resources, agriculture) And Youth Innovation Campaign Work:. Instead of concentrating on one vertical sector (e.g., healthcare or education), our focus is on the digital innovations that cut across all sectors, shown below, and that can also deliver immediate benefits to the least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, small island developing states and other underserved populations. This framework shows how ICT can be used as a common thread that support the Samoa Pathway priority areas such as sustainable tourism for economic development, disaster management for public safety, climate change for public welfare, food security and nutrition for public health, and several other vital areas. Our goal is to aggressively explore how ICT can be a catalyst in several areas instead of one vertical sector.  InnovationBed is currently the ICT4SIDS design after Africa’s peculiar ecosystem characteristics – Programos Foundation ideated this as local strategic smart hubs rapid implementation of sustainable development goals using computer aided planning, engineering and management concepts to mentor, incubate and generally offer education in the technology and non tech space where innovation is now competitive and Africa is expected to rise above the present state of more consumption than production in almost everything. Programos Foundation has been working with the UN World Summit Awards to select, promote and connect purpose-driven local digital innovation with strong impact on improving the Nigerian society given the too many social challenges they face. Programos Foundation whose parent company Programos Software Group is a corporate member of Information Technology (Industry) Association of Nigeria, ITAN is implementation partner to the World Information Technology and Services Alliance, WITSA’s youth educational development pilot called “Education” Following Programos Foundation’s interventions and resultant huge success by Nigeria at global innovation competitions which have consistently imprinted indelible mark of Nigeria on the global innovation map. The birth of UN SPACE4Nigeria  Amos Emmanuel, Founder Programos Foundation, Project Manager, ICT4SIDS Nigeria (Innovationbed.Africa) Why remain in the SPACE4Nigeria project for so long?My concern is the fast changing future – it requires even more to ACCELERATE efforts to bridge the further widening gaps in Least Developed Countries LDCs!!!Workforce Trends and Strategies for the Fourth Industrial Revolution How do we HARNESS the TRANSFORMATIVE POTENTIAL of the Fourth Industrial Revolution? Government and Stakeholders and business leaders across all industries and regions will increasingly be called upon to formulate a comprehensive workforce strategy ready to meet the challenges of this new era of accelerating change and innovation. Policy-makers, educators, labour unions and individual workers likewise have much to gain from deeper understanding of the new labour market and proactive preparation for the changes underway. Key factors to consider include mapping the scale of occupational change underway and documenting emerging and declining job types; highlighting opportunities to use new technologies to augment human work and upgrade job quality; tracking the evolution of job-relevant skills; and, finally, documenting the business case for investment in retraining, up-skilling and workforce transformation.  NB: SPACE4Nigeria and the ICT4SIDS programme formulation is what we call the INNOVATIONBED initiative because it is fashioned and operated to proactively prepare man, resource and policy for the CHANGE underway.Since our intention is purpose-driven, the digital content and technologies behind the InnovationBed project has the potential to create a more just and sustainable Nigeria because it focuses in solving local challenges that enables positive, sustainable values for the society.InnovationBed – means proactive preparation for society change underway!!!:Where we are going!How do we go there? Uber of Kabukabu? |
| The ICT4SIDS Partnership is using ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) to accelerate the adoption of UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and the Samoa Pathway Declaration.The objective of the Global ICT4SIDS Center is to support smart hubs that provide inexpensive and highly specialized community services in health, education, public safety, public welfare and decision support.These hubs are designed to collaborate with each other across communities for rapid regional transformation and thus lead to rapid adoption of Samoa Pathway and SDGs. The SPACE (Strategic Planning Architecture, Control and Education) project was launched in 2010 at the United Nations Headquarters, New York. It was a joint initiative between Mr. Jalai Abu-Ghazaley (Fmr) Chairman, United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Develop (UN-GAID) and the UN Secretary General Mr. Ban Ki-Moon. Since then, the SPACE Solution has become very robust and in-sync with a version developed and modeled after “what works for Nigeria” by working group membership of Nigeria’s Programos Foundation. The company was authorized by the UN-GAID advisor on UN-SPACE Project to host and manage the Nigerian portlet now at InnovationBed.africa. SPACE4Nigeria – an introduction:SPACE4Nigeria is the acronym for “Strategic Planning, Architectures and Acquisition, Controls & Education” portlet proposed to identify and integrate Nigeria’s unique requirements in diverse service sector planning in line with the UN S.P.A.C.E (Strategic Planning, Acquisition, and Control Education) project methodology. Initiative partner responsibilities include but not limited to announcing, promoting SPACE in region and facilitating human capital building, service delivery within the overall scope of United Nations eNabler initiative.Areas covered include health, education, public safety and public welfare, corruption control etc Foundation blocks for Computer-Aided Strategic Planning eNabler: Agriculture, Health Services, Transport, Justice, Environment, Education, Commerce & Industry, Youths, Sports, Home Affairs,Social Development & Culture, Infrastructure/ICT, Information/Strategy, Rural & Urban Development, Works & Housing, Civil Service Commission, Establishment Training and Pension, Finance, Economic Planning & Budget from around the country. — Pilot Project Survey questions about Space4Nigeria Project (pls respond by Feb 22, 2019):What are the areas of focus of your Pilot Project What has been done so far What are the areas of improvement (i.e., what needs to be done)What are the lessons learned Any other general comments and suggestions #REINNOVATENIGERIA MULTI-DISCIPLINARY INNOVATION DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH (MDIDR – 2 hour) MASTERCLASS SERIES & DIGITAL INNOVATION CAMPAIGNS 2019 HIGHER INSTITUTIONS: UNILAG LASU POLYTECHNICS SECONDARY SCHOOLS Mothers Town Hall Fathers Town Hall Chemist OperatorsElectricians PhotographersPrinting Press OperatorsFarmersTaxi and kabukabu operatorsSecurity Outfits Councillors LGA CHAIRMENSTATE HOUSE OF ASSEMBLIES NATIONAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENCY MINISTERIES POLICY DIRECTORS OF MDAS MEDIA REPS OF MINISTRIES Manufacturers Association of Nigeria members companies: Food Household etc TARGETING LAW, BUSINESS, SOCIAL SCIENCE, ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE STUDENTS OF TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS. Topics: About Programos, UN ICT4SIDS, UN WORLD SUMMIT AWARDS (WSANIGERIA), GLOBAL DIGITAL FORUM Policies for innovation:https://youtu.be/WV9p6_XgY8I https://youtu.be/-pgDH3lsZE4 https://youtu.be/IiyMkOfycOg What is Innovation? https://youtu.be/IiyMkOfycOg Who can Innovate? Who Innovates? Why innovate? Why the need to ReInnovate? What is the personal, corporate, community and global value of innovation? Is Innovation local content development? What ideas can help students/teachers in school? Who are change makers in the global innovation society? How can local innovators collaborate with foreign ones especially on best practise, mentorship and enduring partnerships? What low-hanging-fruit opportunities exist for immediate tapping into as start-ups? SPACE4Nigeria – The Significance • Identify the main alternatives and the key business/technical issues involved in each alternative, and helps in evaluation & selection of the best alternatives BEFORE initiating the project. • accelerate the development processes for decision making by quickly generating plans in hours instead of weeks or months. • hide technical details and thus can be used by people with different backgrounds, introduce and enforce the same standards and best practices quickly and uniformly across all users • be accessed over the Internet by people living anywhere and thus level the playing field between developed and developing countries • support what-if analysis of different scenarios • can be used as a training and educational tool SPACE4Nigeria – What Does It Produce?Generates the following reports: • Business plans that can be used for obtaining funding • DPRs – Detailed Planning Reports that show the architecture, the needed policies, and enabling technologies for the chosen service • Standardized RFPs (Requests for Proposals) that can be used to attract the needed vendors through an open bidding process • Project management, disaster recovery and governance guidelines for monitoring and controlling the development activities • Education, training and public awareness campaigns needed for success SPACE4NIGERIA LITERACY PROGRAMME FOR PUBLIC OFFICE HOLDERS Understanding basic issues, policies, and approaches!? HOW? • Developing a customized strategic plan that is specific to Nigeria! HOW? • How do users successfully execute the developed plan? HOW? • How do users monitor and evaluate the progress being made?” HOW?Answer is: By accessing the UN Strategic Planning system, SPACE initiative will be of great value to government organization(s) in the execution of projects in each state without re-inventing the wheel. SPACE4nigeria Portlet … Serving humanity in diverse areas of development!Therefore, provides a one-stop shop that attempts to address these issues and thus significantly increasing the chances of success. The basic objective of the ICT4SIDS Partnership is to accelerate the adoption of SDGs through innovative smart hubs that collaborate with each other at local, regional and national levels. Instead of focusing on large scale smart cities, we are developing smart hubs located in small islands, small towns and isolated communities to provide most appropriate location specific services that are of high value to the rural as well as urban populations. The ICT4SIDS Partnership (Registered UN Partnership No: 8005) was formed in Samoa in 2014, under the UN-OHRLLS guidance, to utilize the latest digital innovations for rapid implementations of SDGs for SIDS and LDCs.The main objective of the country level initiative SPACE4Nigeria Pilot is to leverage on the ICT4SIDS partnership and deliver in the most optimal ways an InnovationBed of solutions encouraging homegrown contents and local techpreneurs coming together to share and exchange ideas that will bring about a digital set of smart hubs that enable collaboration among people, and resources thereby allowing rapid progress in health, education and other sectors in Nigeria, and which can be later expanded to other countries in Africa, as well as leave the benefit of modern job-creation prospect of Decision Support e-Services to youths particularly on the initiative value chain. Figure 1: Overall architectural vision for smart hubs and the Global Decision Support Center  A Conceptual View of SPACE   Framework of SPACE4Nigeria: How we link up with the CORE SPACE resource tool This initiative is well positioned now for it to be introduced by the UN ICT4SIDS to the Nigerian Agencies (Government or private) for implementation. Further country customization will be easy to administer given past research and development and related case studies. NB:Computer Aided Implementation Methodology for Launching out Innovationbed (ICT4SIDS) in Nigeria. The vision of implementation of SPACE4Nigeria is very promising going by our past pilot experience, but because implementing such a project in Nigeria can be such a massive scale and a non-trivial task due to the technical, management and logistical challenges, we really will need the buy in of the federal and state governments to offer unflinching supports to ensure we make a success of the implementation for the good of all and for the changing future of Nigeria.World over, many other stakeholders are being promoted to achieve solution goals to nation building.    Programos Foundation who joined the UN-GAID (Global Alliance in ICT Development) Initiative in 2010 and worked directly with the Lead Architect of the UN GAID Prof Amjad Umar at that time launched the SPACE4Nigeria Project. Programos through Mr Amos Emmanuel defended the SPACE4Nigeria initiative severally at the UN Infopoverty World Conference editions at the UN Headquarters, New York, US and Programos was specially recognized in the 14th Infopoverty World Conference Integrated Community of stakeholders network galaxy from Africa as above. From lessons learnt in the SPACE4Nigeria project development which started as a corruption-control agenda, we could not afford to keep our vision on hold owing to challenges of local support, prevalent leadership and insecurity questions, so we kept pursuing, refining our pilot works through constant reviews with the SPACE4Nigeria, ICT4SIDS and the NGE Solutions teams over the years. We have already researched sustainable InnovationBed resources of contents, infrastructure and innovators across verticals of Open Government and Citizens Engagement, eLearning and Education, e-Business and Commerce, Smart Settlement and Urbanization, which will serve Nigeria and its unique innovation be=d resources will catalyze shared knowledgebase across the 6 geo political zones, will foster collaboration with the outside world digitally. InnovationBed methodology relies heavily on a powerful computer aided planning and decision support environment, called SPACE (Strategic Planning, Architecture, Controls and Education) and other tools with foundational databases fetching real-time data from the World Bank, World Economic Forum feeds (WEF) etc. SPACE4Nigeria for short is the acronym for the ICT4SIDS/SPACE implementation for Nigeria. The SPACE environment (www.space4ict.com) addresses economic challenges by producing highly customized portal to support different smart hub configurations within hours. Using Technology to make Peace – Peacetech!Using Technology to make Toll Charges a service to road users rather than as another traffic pain – Tolltech!Using Technology to make Manufacturing process deliver optimal productivity – Manutech! |
SPACE4Nigeria – How we work and the Impacts we have made during our annual outreach programmes in Nigeria! One of the early ways Programos Foundation implemented SPACE4Nigeria initiative was to start with education where we designed and launched four-purpose capacity development programmes tagged SIDOLIBERTY (SIDO – Software Implementation, Development and Outsourcing) initiative in Nigeria which brought about social liberation among different cadres of citizens from diverse disciplines in the society about ICT and its relevance in taking actions on the MDGs that later transformed into SDGs – hence the extra name ‘LIBERTY’ meaning ‘freedom’.     The parent innovation project name with four key brands targeting community elders and youths (SIDO-TOWNHALL), undergraduates and graduates from our tertiary institutions (SIDO-GRAD), students and interns on short internship programmes ((SIDO-SIWES) as well long-term entrepreneurship of the (SIDO-FACTORY) for on-the-job professionals from different industries.     Below is sample set of graduating beneficiaries of the FREE SIDOLiberty programmes of Programos Foundation.  Using meetings, classroom or workshop set ups – we have been able to provide an evidence base supports that youths from several institutions have identified with us and the impacts so created and have had to honour Programos with awards for our work on SPACE4Nigeria. We package our capacity development sessions considering what policies might best promote the benefits of AI and Machine Learning and what rules and operating guidelines might best prevent their abuse.   SPACE4Nigeria review sessions with interns from University of Lagos and Convenant University, Ogun State, Nigeria.   Some Programos Foundation backoffice team on SPACE4Nigeria sessions.    South-South region capacity on SPACE4Nigeria held in Foundation Polytechnics Ikot Ekpene, Akwa-Ibom State, Nigeria 2018  We have received Merit Awards from the Hon Minister Information Technology Product and Partnership Development – as a UN SPACE Initiative Working Group member since 2010 we have supported the development of the SPACE planner toolkit after the UN SDG goals and now set to roll out adoption across the private and public sectors in Nigeria.   Programos and the lead project Consultants Prof Amjad Umar and Dr Steffens of the University of Oklahoma in early sessions of SPACE4Nigeria design and defense at UN-GAID and InfoPoverty conferences.  ICT4SIDS Partnership Team: • Dr Amjad Umar, Director and Chief Architect (ICT4SIDS Partnership), Professor and Director of ICT Program, Harrisburg University; Adjunct Professor of Telecommunications, University of Pennsylvania; Fulbright Senior Specialist on ICT, • Robert St Thomas, President, GTG Services; IBM Corporation (retired); Senior Advisor, ICT4SIDS; • Dr John Kenerson, Director, World Hypertension Action Group (Whag); Senior Advisor, ICT4SIDS; Co-Founder, Colleagues in Care; •Dr John Steffens, Assistant Vice Provost Emeritus and Executive Director, Public Service Institute, The University of Oklahoma, • NGE Solutions Team (Kamran Khalid, Nauman Javed, Adnan Javed, Hannan Dawood, Abdul Qadir, and Arslan Dawood) We greatly appreciate the support from Harrisburg University (Management and Technical Staff) Emmanuel Amos (Nigeria), Paul Haye (Jamaica), John Mwaipopo (Tanzania), and many other Points of Contacts (POCs) and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) SPACE4Nigeria project also used research and policy analysis, to promote multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary understanding of the innovation ecosystem in terms of gaps present and solutions or fixes that have brought opportunities that is correcting the wrongs that inhibit growth of SPACE4Nigeria adoption in Nigeria. One of the many sessions in defense of the SPACE4Nigeria Initiative at the UN Headquarters in New York:   With support of local and mainstream media we have enjoyed coordinated outreach and mobilization efforts of very tech savvy entrepreneurs from the various regions of Nigeria promoting our InnovationBed Campaign in Nigeria**website page imageProgramos Foundation’s experience has improved over the years given that we offer operational supports to the UN SPACE4Nigeria and ICT4SIDS initiative as National Coordinator, UN World Summit Awards process in Nigeria as the Eminent National Expert for Nigeria as well as the representation of the Global Digital Foundation as Director Africa. We have conducted invested and provided logistical support to the planning of several events around the SPACE4Nigeria events and have led Nigerian National InnovationBed Delegations from Nigeria to Sri Lanka, Abu Dhabi, Portugal, Singapore, Hong Kong and Vienna. Several visits to the UN facilities have also boosted our knowledge of Sustainable Development Goals and the related UN processes. Moreover, Programos enjoys a Board membership if ITAN in Nigeria.  Programos Foundation President was ITAN/NASSCOM 2017 & 2018 event LOC Chairperson in Nigeria for ITAN. ITAN President, Commtech Minister – Barr. Adebayo Shittu, and Programos boss receiving the Indian Govt delegation to Nigeria.From left to right: Nicholas Williams, Head of ICT, African Development Bank; Mr Tope Fashedemi, Director, E-Government, NITDA; Mr. B. N. Reddy, High Commissioner of India, Nigeria; Mr. Shyamal Ghosh, Chairman, TEPC; H.E. Barr. Abdur-Raheem Adebayo Shittu, Hon’ble Minister of Communications, Government of Nigeria; H.E. Mr. Vincent SowahOdotel, Hon’ble Deputy Minister of Communications, Ghana; H.E. Debretsion G. Michael (PhD), Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Ethiopia; Mr. Sanjay Nayak, Co-Chairman, TEPC and CEO, Tejas Networks; Mr. Tayo Adeniyi, President of ITAN; Ms. Akansha Tete, Director – Global Trade Development, NASSCOM; Mr. Amos Emmanuel, Director Africa, Global Digital Foundation  Programos Foundation President sharing SPACE4Nigeria Initiative to Nigeria before Nasscom, India  SPACE4Nigeria Coordinator with Delegation from India led by Hon’ble Minister of State for Communications Manoj Sinha  Programos Foundation President sharing SPACE4Nigeria Initiative to Nigeria’s Minister Communication Technology, H.E. Barr. Adebayo Shittu  Programos Foundation President with Alhaji Salisu fmr ict Director at CMD  Programos Foundation President flanked with Nigeria’s Numero Uno Mother of ICT in Nigeria, Mrs Moni Udoh.  Programos Foundation President always in safe hands, bound by National Presidents of ITAN (Information Technology Association of Nigeria) and ATCON (Association of Telecom Companies of Nigeria respectively. Programos Foundation’s SPACE4Nigeria is committed Governments’ job creation facilitation agenda  With the above established hubs across many countries, InnovationBed Smart hubs from Nigeria can plug into them; the Innovation ecosystem will blossom and expand giving citizens expanded opportunities to innovate and create new jobs in line with the new labour market changes.We are highly advised to stay focused on low cost but high impact services, such as hypertension and educating the school teachers on ICT, to have high impact without significant financial resources.Continue identifying and offering No-Tech, Low-Tech. Medium Tech and High Tech solutions through the Smart Hubs to serve location specific needs – thus literally leaving no one behind.Continue refining and expanding our computer aided implementation methodology based on lessons learned with particular focus on cost reduction to reduce the funding challenges.Encourage young entrepreneurs from the 6 geo political zones to become “InnovationBed smart hub masters” and help them start their own businesses.Expand the number of participants and collaborating scenarios where small smart hubs collaborate with larger hubs for economic development and improved public service.Gradually support more SDGs, such as the ones related to Disaster Resilience and Management (DRM), for higher value for SIDS.Expand the training and capacity-building capabilities of our computer-aided toolset for young entrepreneurs and government officials because it allows hands-on planning and decision support experiments. SPACE4Nigeria – Areas of Improvement! Programos Foundation is making sure it supports the development of data visualization for InnovationBed implementation and adoption across the country.We are developing an elaborate online platform that will partner with network experts across the continent to form InnovationBed Partners Network (IBPN), bearing in mind that SPACE4Nigeria was discerned from inception of my engagement that Nigeria is key to connecting Africa, as such, implementation of this initiative in full scale in Nigeria will foster extension to other African countries sharing the lessons and gains. |
SPACE4Nigeria Scope
SPACE4Nigeria has administered in numerous own and joint youth capacity development programmes and innovation hubs across Nigeria within the period
– From the alliance of the Programos Foundation with United Action Congress we have facilitated the capacity development for hundreds of youths under the Dr Muiz Banire’s(SAN) support and sponsorship.
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-SPACE4Nigeria pilot also has introduced the Management Trainee educational initiative where we have trained over 500 unemployed graduates of diverse disciplines in the ICT enabled education programme which later transformed all them irrespective of profession background into computer literate, labour-ready youths who were sought for by capital market operator organizations in Nigeria as soon as they were graduating from our progrmmes. SPACE4Nigeria initiative tagged SIDOLiberty made our beneficiaries become ‘change agents’ who could now go speak confidently and earn their jobs!
Why the concentration in capital market sub-sector of the economy?
Given that Programos is the leading indigenous capital market solutions service provider for 2 decades in Nigeria, we saw manpower challenge across our clientele network and so we offered the research and development under the space4nigeria pilot at the time so as to save the then turbulent market. These efforts created a strong impact and accelerated the dynamics of market recovery as we continue to re-innovate the market on FIX (Financial Information eXchange) technologies with our populous product design called CloudIntegra Investment Back-Office solution, CiFIXpro real-time bond-equity trader and CiMobile. CloudIntegra runs in other countries in Africa.
Shots of Programos Foundation President sharing ICT4SIDS/SPACE4Nigeria project with the late Prof Dora Akwunyili former Minister of Information.
Programos moderated SPACE4Nigeria programme in a manner it now has the tendency to bridge the yawning gaps between undergraduates and the out-of-school cum office practice realities. Programos Foundation is committed to building capacity for both ICT and NON-ICT Nigerian graduates and undergraduates in Universities, Polytechnics and other institutions like Nigerian Association of Oduduwa Students (NAOS), Nigeria Association of Computer Science Students (NACOSS) in critical areas that can encourage them rediscover timely re-learning need of modern tech education adequate for surviving tomorrow’s labour market demands or imbibe self-employment opportunities. SPACE4Nigeria is already reviewing a tiered educational programme with some top institutions and partnerships such as Campus2Corporate (C2C-FDP) and Hong Kong Emerging Technology Education (HKETEA) partnerships signed in India 2017 and Portugal 2019 respectively.
**drop pic for signing partnership
**Drop picture of late Prof Dora Akwuili here
With contents around the SPACE4Nigeria digital bedrock for the SDGs verticals addressing Economic Development, Healthcare, Education, Public Safety (Disaster Management), Public Welfare, Agriculture, Transportation etc:
The SPACE4Nigeria pilot rejuvenated the UN WSA activities in Nigeria between 2010 and 2019 and made Nigeria record fantastic rewards from our foundation’s tech-scouting exercise annually discovering, promoting home-grown digital innovations under the World Summit Awards best e-content global innovation competition. This has place Nigeria as an active innovative country contributing to advancements of life using ICTs.
Under our SPACE4Nigeria programme pilot we hereby list innovation laurels that have been rated by the United Nations World Summit Awards, WSA Winners Congress events across the world:
- African Awards – Micro (Uwaje’s Award)
- iPolice Mobile Produced by Mr Peter Ihesie was honored in UAE, Abu Dhabi 2014 Competition) – a public safety innovation that won in 2013 <wsa link to product>
- Transparent Nigeria by Uchechi Iwealla was honored in Sri Lanka 2015 Competition)
- Opon Imo by Osun State Government. Ogbeni Raifu Aregbesola was honoured for the Educational Product in 2015 in Colombo, Sri Lanka 2015 WSA Winners’ Congress.
- Omomi Mobile Health App by Dr Charles 2015
- Opinion Nigeria (Sri Lanka 2015 Competition)
- FillyaTank.ng (2016 Competition)
- TruckIT.ng By Mr Tom Roberts (Vienna, Austria 2017 Competition)
- Carrot.ng (Cascais, Portugal 2018 Competition)
- Max.ng (Cascais, Portugal 2018 Competition)
- PROPOSED SERVICES
The main objective of UN SPACE4NIGERIA Strategic e-Planner is to use the UNSPACE Toolset to significantly accelerate government projects in Nigeria by preventing re-invention of the wheel. It provides answers to the following crucial questions routinely faced by Government officials involved in the day to day planning and execution of Government projects/policies. These include:
-How do I understand the basic technical issues and approaches involved in this proposed project without really having to do research myself?
-How do I carry out this project without re-inventing the wheel? In other words, what tools are available to assist me achieve a quicker and more efficient result?
-How do I successfully execute the developed plan?
-How do I monitor and evaluate the progress being made with the project?
EXPERIENCE OF THE NIGERIAN PILOT:
THINGS WE SEEK FOR INNOVATION EVALUATION
| Please provide the link to a short video about your solution. |
| Which problem do you solve with your product? |
| How do you solve the aforementioned problem with your product? |
| Provide a short marketing/PR text about your solution. |
| Stage of Product/Solution |
| Why should your solution be selected as WSA winner? What´s your USP? |
| Competition/Comparison – Who is doing something similar? |
| What´s your target group/people addressed? |
| What measures do you set to reach your target group/community addressed? |
| Tell us more about your team! |
| When was your company/organization founded? |
| Metrics of achievement |
| Tell us more about the local context of your solution. |
| Which key technologies are you using ? |
| Is your technical solution open source? |
| Sustainability/ Business Model. |
| Please share some information if and how the jury members can test your solution |
| Has your product already won other awards or recognition? |
| What´s next? What are your next plans and steps? |
- One of the key outcomes which supports the objective of the pilot projects is to quickly learn what really works and provide educational and entrepreneurship opportunities for the Nigerian youth – by this we are certain that an aggressive promotion of the Innovationbed vision across the country will accelerate the speed to bridging this challenge for our youths.
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