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| Mrs Omobola Johnson |
Mrs.
Johnson made this known to DigitalSENSE Business News at the weekend in Lagos
and said that the goal of iDEA is to support Nigerian ICT Entrepreneurs create
successful businesses by offering support to promising ICT entrepreneurs
through ICT incubation centres that will be established in a selected number of
cities.
Just
as she revealed the second centre will be launched soon in Calabar, adding that
these centres are being initially established and funded by government through
the National Information Technology Development Fund (NITDEF).
“…They
will subsequently be funded and managed independent of government through iDEA
under the guidance and supervision of the Governing Council which was
inaugurated earlier in February,” she said.
According
to the Special Adviser on Media to CommTech Minister, Mrs. Efem Nkanga, the Minister
noted that the primary goal of the iDEA Incubation Centre is to create 25
successful ICT businesses by 2015 and catalyse the ICT Industry by helping
Nigerian ICT Entrepreneurs create successful businesses.
She
added that the centre will also support the interactions between software
entrepreneurs/start-ups and their partners, thus developing indigenous skills
and capabilities. It will also act as hubs of innovation that support the
development and maturity of a local software economy.
The
IDEA centre she added will provide incubates business and technical training,
access to software development tools at no cost, use of facilities and
computing resources for development purposes, mentoring, assistance with
marketing and promotion and access to finance.
On
the sustainability of iDEA, Johnson said IT Incubation Centre journey began in
2011 when we constituted an IT Incubation Committee comprising of mostly
private sector and government constituted to develop Incubation operational
blueprint.
“In
February, we inaugurated the Governing Board of the program (iDEA), comprising
of industry players and experts with Mr. Dotun Sulaiman as the Chairman. This
is a right direction for us to take to ensure sustainability of this programme,”
she said.
On
access to funding, the Minister assured that they are setting up a venture
capital fund in conjunction with private equity investors to be solely focused
on ICT businesses.
Initial
and final close of US$15m and US30m respectively with N500m/US$3.5m Seed
Capital secured from NITDEVF; while the remaining fund will be sourced through
private equity. She added that a fund manager has been selected to manage the
Fund and disbursements will commence April 2013.
She expressed appreciation to
the Incubation Committee members who assisted in defining the Incubation
framework and blueprint and the Implementation Committee who defined the
implementation plan and the governance structure.
Also speaking, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Dr Henry Akpan
emphasised that the Incubation programme is an initiative of the Ministry which
started since the inception of the Ministry in 2011 and was tenderly midwifed
in collaboration with National Information Technology Development Agency and
the private sector.
Dr
Akpan added that there are rigorous planning, thinking-through and extensive
collaborations both locally and overseas that have been infused into the
Incubation program to ensure that the right model that can deliver same value
as other international incubation centres is launched.
He
concluded that ‘’the launch marks the beginning of a new era in the history of
our software industry- a new dawn of hope for our software entrepreneurs and
start-ups to grow their creative ideas to fruition through the iDEA program.
Through the active participation of the private sector in this programme, it is
our firm believe that this will not only ensure sustainability of the centre
but also bring to bear access to a wide range of expertise from both local and
global ICT companies that can shape the outcome of the products from these
centers’’
In
his comments, the DG of NITDA, Prof Cleopas Angaye commended the Minister for
the Incubation center initiative which he stressed will create a viable vibrant
local software industry in the country.
Earlier,
the Chairman, Governing Board of iDEA, Adedotun Suleiman, said the iDEA
programme will provide technical and financial assistance to software developers
and start-ups to grow and bring their ideas to fruition.
Remmy Nweke
... Making SENSE of digital revolution!
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