Zenith Bank Tech fair held yesterday in Lagos was indeed a tech season fair, most especially from talks handled by various tech expert in the industries. Among the keynote’s speakers are, Country Manager at Google Nigeria, Juliet Ehimuan-Chiazor, Managing Director, Huawei Technologies Nigeria, Mr. Eric Zhang who was represented by the Director, Wireless Technology at Huawei, Mr. Anthony Ethem, Country Manager, Oracle Nigeria, Mr. Adebayo Sanni and many notable business tycoons.
The convener of the event Zenith Bank PLC, led by the Chairman and Founder of Zenith Bank, Mr. Jim Ovia, emphasized the need for youth empowerment with emerging technology tools in order to adequately prepare them for the next digital transformation in today’s fourth industrial revolution era.
Jim Ovia, at the Zenith Bank Tech Fair yesterday in Lagos, said to achieve digital youth empowerment, the federal government, in collaboration with the private sector, must implement effective youth workforce programmes that would create the requisite skills’ development would make the youth get jobs in the formal sector.
According to him, if the right digital empowerment is not given to youths, they could be disenfranchised, which could lead to crises that would likely threaten the future of youths and the Nigerian economy.
He said Nigeria has 44.23 million youth labour force, with an average of 390,000 youth school graduates annually, yet 13.15 million of the total youth population remained unemployed, representing 29.70 per cent of youth unemployment as at the third quarters of 2018.
He, therefore, called for proper education that offers employable skills with relevant and up-to-date curriculum, tailored to the needs of the future workforce.
Jim Ovia equally stressed the need for training and apprenticeship that will deliver the right skills and create internship opportunities.
Jim Ovia said the era of the fourth industrial revolution is all about disruptive and innovative technology, which he said Nigerian youths must key into, given its potential and applications.
He listed some of the market values for the various disruptive innovations, whose projected values he described as huge.
According to him, the projected revenue value for 3D printing would reach $34.8 billion by 2024; Artificial Intelligence (AI) would reach $118.6 billion by 2025; drones revenue would reach $43.1 billion by 2024; augmented reality would reach $85 billion by 2025 and robotics, both personal and domestic tasks robots, would exceed 22.1 million units valued at $4.6 billion by the end of 2019.
Others, according to him, includes quantum computing, which is valued at $780 million by 2025; blockchain technology to exceed $10 billion by 2023; and Internet of Things (IoTs) to reach $74.74 billion by 2023, while FinTech revenue is projected to reach $638 billion by 2024.
The chairman calls on the Federal government in collaboration with the private sector to meaningfully engage the youth in strategic Digital skill acquisition training and empowerment which will make them gainfully competitive for the new age digital era.
The Zenith bank tech fair is one of the Zenith Bank Programmes scheduled for the ember months which started since September with the Aspire music festival and will climax with the Lifestyle fair 2.0 coming up November 29, 30 and DEC 1.