Omeife, an Africans Humanoid robot was inbuilt by Africans for Africans. It was launched in Abuja, Nigeria some days ago by the UNICCON group of companies. The event themed ‘The future of Artificial Intelligence in the African Tech Ecosystem’, was attended by top dignitaries in the country.
The Vice President of Nigeria, Prof Osinbanjo and a representative of the Minister of Communication and Digita Technology, Kashifu Abdullahi were present at the event.
Osinbanjo spoke about the federal government’s plan to intensify efforts at harnessing the talents of Nigerian youth’s talents in the area of Artificial Intelligence (AI), leading to national development in the country.
According to him, data plays a very important role in the advancement of Artificial Intelligence. And so the government is working on a national stat strategy which would allow data to be available for scientific use.
He says “if your data is skewed, you will get a skewed result hence we must ensure that we have the correct data and data that fully represents our culture and values.
“We need to encourage our indigenous African technology by encouraging our people to be digitally visible and get the data available for the artificial intelligence to use to take decisions that suit us. We also need to connect to the unconnected.
To achieve these, the government is expanding its mandate to include initiatives such as the broadband plan to connect the unconnected.”
He adds that robots in Africa are not from, so Omeife is really a big one for Africans. It is built with African data built and will help to boost our technology locally and to promote our culture and values.
Using technology from elsewhere might not be beneficial for Africans as it might not fit into our context.
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Also, he adds that the government will put in place regulations that will ensure responsible technology. This is because asides from the technology being super intelligent, it will also help to efficiently improve lives according to the data available to it.
Explaining further, the technology needs to be checked as it could serve as a double-edged sword. That is, as much as it has a positive impact on people, it also has a negative impact on people.
At the event, the Minister of Communication and Digital Technology, Isa Ali Pantami, was duly represented.
Speaking on his behalf, the Director General of the National Information Technology Development and Agency, (NITDA), Kashifu Abdullahi exposed some key benefits of the technology.
Some of the benefits include using the robots for farming, teaching, construction of roads and cities, gatherings, detection of bombs and lastly for fighting insecurity issues.
Also, he adds that Nigeria plans to launch an innovation centre that would enable young Nigerians to develop their talent in AI.
Chuks Ekwueme, Chairman of UNICCON Group gives more insight into the technology.
He highlighted the company’s motivation for the technology; Africa was lagging behind in technology and we were forced to adopt technology that wasn’t designed for us.
Therefore, the company took the initiative to bridge the technology gap in Africa, creating technology that is tailored to meet the needs of Africa.
He adds that technology brings a lot of value in dealing with insecurity through surveillance, robot army, intelligent gathering, profiling and lie detector.
Also, the robots can be advanced to a period where they can e sent out on missions that are deadly.
Explaining more about the product, he speaks about its diversity.
“There are products that will be rolled out from Omeife ranging from Omeife as a service, Omeife hardware and Omeife humanoid robot which in total has market revenue worth 6.8 billion dollars across the African market and other parts of the world,” he said.
What will Omeife mean for the Nigerian economy?
As the country has been faced with a lot of security issues which have hindered a lot of transactions and activities.
Security like Omeife will help in eradicating security issues in the state. Also, it will be beneficial in other sectors of the state.
Also, Omeife will create a wave for other young innovators who are looking to create their own Artificial Intelligent technology.
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