MTN Nigeria and Chams Resort will address a national audience on Smart City at the August edition of Ennovators Breakfast Series [EBS], themed Building Tomorrow’s Cities, an information technology knowledge-sharing forum at the Oriental Hotel, Lagos.
MTN’s Chief Enterprise Business Officer, Lynda Saint Nwafor, would address the bespoke gathering on ICT as a Critical Driver for Building Smart Cities, while founder and CEO, Chams Resort, Demola Aladekomo would speak on Overcoming the Challenges of Building a Smart City in a Challenged Economy.
According to MD/CEO, eMaginations, organizer of the EBS, Sola Fanawopo, as the chief initiator of Lagos Smart City development, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode is expected to give the keynote address at the forum.
Smart City is a growing concept that draws from the success of Dubai’s innovative knowledge-based industry clusters to empower business growth for companies and knowledge workers all over the world. The Smart City rides on the convergence of technology, economic development, and governance.
Recently Lagos State government and the City of Dubai have struck a historic partnership that would raise the status of Lagos as the first Smart City in Africa. The collaboration is part of the larger vision to make Lagos safer, cleaner, and more prosperous.
Fanawopo said the vision of tomorrow’s smart city holds an enormous amount of promise. “Picture a densely populated city like Lagos, Kano, Ibadan, Onitsha, and Abuja, that is safer, more efficient, and environmentally conscious than today’s urban corridors”.
According to him migrating a city’s energy grid, transportation system, or water supply to more efficient platforms that are interconnected “is an extremely complex undertaking that requires the cooperation of different entities such as telcos, tech companies, federal, state, and local governments”.
He, however, stressed that the wireless network of the future would be more sophisticated than today’s. “Experts believe that tomorrow’s wireless network framework would have a mix of cellular, Wi-Fi, short-range sensors, M2M communications”, he explained.
Among other subjects, the August edition of EBS would delve into the services that make a smart city, how wireless carriers, tech companies, and cities improve connectivity and automation, how city officials and managers make their cities smarter with technologies deployment, and big data, the revolution that will transform how we live, work, think in our cities.
Enumerating the need to attend the forum, Fanawopo said the EBS would assist businesses to understand and utilize smart strategies, discover the disciplines that would change because of the need for more sustainable cities. “With a vast availability of technologies, cities of the future would face the challenge of creating more organised spaces”, he said.
Those whose responsibility cover the internet of things, government initiatives, information systems, connected X, smart mobility, connected devices, platforms as a service, big data predictive analytics and business intelligence are expected to attend the forum. Others are those in data architecture, data infrastructure, data science, data designing and decision science.
To be moderated by Chineye Mba-Uzoukwu, the EBS would have General Manager, IBM West Africa, Taiwo Otiti; acting Director General, Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency [NITDA], Vincent Olatunji; Google Nigeria, General Manager, Juliet Ehimuan and acting MD, Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority [LAMATA], Iyiola Adegboye as speakers.
