Excitement mounted on Friday as young people from across Ikorodu, Lagos state, gathered to attend the inauguration of an innovation lab dedicated to acquiring technical skills. Opened by Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the facility aims to host digital skills training programs such as product design, data science and metaverse.
We also provide support for start-ups, community events and ecosystem engagements that drive entrepreneurship, innovation and economic growth in East Lagos.
The Senator Abiru Innovation Lab (SAIL), the lab is an initiative of Lagos East Senator Tokumbo Abiru. Furthermore, he had support from the Industrial Bank and the Lagos State Government.
Sanwo-Olu and other attendants toured the facility, which was once the family home of the Abirus. However, it has been reconstructed and decorated with state-of-the-art equipment and furniture for a conducive learning experience.
The governor, in his address, said the state was committed to attracting more investment as well as supporting technological hubs.
He said-
“This is just the beginning of a lot of interventions that we will be seeing. Please make good use of this facility; take care of it as if it’s your own because this is your future; this is what will give you the empowerment, freedom, liberty, and scaling platform that you can use to compete with other players of the world.
“Africa missed the first industrial revolution, we missed the second, we started the third but it was far gone; the fourth and the fifth, we don’t have any excuse. Technology is what will help us wrap up. Technology is what will give us that leap from where we can sit in Ikorodu and compete with somebody in the United States.”
To further realize the government’s vision of fostering technology-driven innovation, the governor announced the purchase of acres of land in the state’s Yaba area for the construction of a technology campus.
The Special Adviser to the Governor on Innovation and Technology said the state government would partner with the lab. Mr Olatubosun Alake claimed they would absorb it into the Lagos Innovate Partner Network. This would better facilitate their support for trainees who would be using the facility.
He said with the partnership, the trainees would get vouchers from Lagos State. The voucher would enable them to use the facility with Internet access, electricity-
“and all of the things required to be able to build their next billion dollar start-ups.”
“Today, the government has funded over 60 innovation companies, and he has also funded over 120 companies in Lagos’s innovative network, so today we are adopting SAIL as part of that network,” he stated.
cc: Punch Ng
