The Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani, has promised government support for indigenous technology companies, through collaboration.
The minister said this in Lagos, during his visit to Imose Technologies smartphone/tablet assembly factory. While appreciating the efforts of local operators, Tijani said the assessment of Imose Technologies factory, would enable the Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy to understand how best it could support indigenous companies to scale.
“We do need companies, businesses that can truly build solutions for our people. In the digital economy space, we can’t achieve our objectives without local companies. Even as we start to invest in fibre optic networks to ensure we can reach all of our people, it’s going to be useless if people don’t have the devices, such as phones, tablets and laptops to be able to access the Internet and use it for meaningful purposes.
“So that is why we need indigenous companies like Imose Technologies and many more out there to understand their pain points and how we can support them so that they can start to truly fully manufacture devices in Nigeria. And that way it can become affordable and our people can have access,” Tijani said. He further said there were several ways the government could collaborate with indigenous companies to boost local manufacturing in Nigeria.
“There are so many ways we can collaborate. For every sector, there’s a complete supply chain and there is also what you may call the value chain through which the actual product is created and consumed. The government cannot leave all of that to private companies to do. There is a need for collaboration and as government, we have to ensure that our regulations are proper to allow indigenous companies to develop solutions and manufacture products.”
Commending Imose Technologies for their manufactured and assembled products, the minister said the government would be interested in supporting the company to further drive down the cost of production and make the products available and accessible to Nigerians.
Chairman/Founder, Imose Technologies, Osayi Izedonmwen, thanked the minister for his visit and assessment while emphasising smartphone batteries as one of the core components that could drive down the cost of producing mobile phones.
Given the large concentration of Lithium in Nigeria, Izedonmwen envisions a future where Imose Technologies could produce Lithium batteries for mobile phones locally, with a bigger plan to mass-produce such mobile phone batteries for export.
“Nigeria has large Lithium deposits spread across many parts of the country and companies are now coming into Nigeria to invest in the processing of the Lithium raw material for export. We believe that shortly Imose Technologies should be at the forefront of producing smartphone batteries from Lithium,” Izedonmwen said.
