Ogbomoso on the up and up as Ennovate Lab marshal Digital Eco Summit, Promises More

Enoch Oyedibu

 

As the world economy continues to rebrand to the digital economy, Ogbomoso is set to take its share with Ennovate Lab marshalling innovative programmes to upscale the community.

 

Over the five years old indigenously-owned technology company seeks to transform Ogbomoso by building its ecosystem which is believed will meaningfully impact its economic transformation.

 

One of the ways to achieve this is the marshalling of the first Ogbomoso Digital Economy Summit which was a conference that pooled stakeholders, investors, professors and government functionaries to discuss digital economic trajectory in a way to help startups and the community build a durable ecosystem of Economy transformation.

 

The Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of the company, Jesudamilare Adesegun-David, who championed the whole event alongside other sponsors explained that the basic reason why he was based in Ogbomoso and organised such an event in the community is only that the community has a lot of opportunities which can be harness to paint and create a new future for the city.

“Today,” CEO InnovateLab stated in an interview with our correspondent, “we are having the Ogbomoso Digital Economy Summit, it is a gathering of economy stakeholders in Ogbomoso where we can all see a shared vision of what the future can look like for us. But, we understand that the world has gone digital so we want to understand how we can harness digital tools, infrastructure, and skills to paint and create a new future for Ogbomoso.

 

“So, we are here together, we had Amazing speakers from across Nigeria and also outside the country who have helped us to see different ways that the Ogbomoso ecosystem can be built to lead to economic transformation.”

 

However, while stressing the reason for him to choose Ogbomoso over all places to establish his company, Jesudamilare Adesegun-David said, “I feel that Ogbomoso has potentials, Ogbomoso has a university of Technology, it has colleges of education, it has teaching hospitals, it has opportunities beyond the imagination, so one of the things I saw was that if we can create a right platform for opportunities then Ogbomoso can be transformed and this is a vision I have been carrying for five years. We knew that this was the year we were to have this summit, to bring people together because we now have the track records that people can check and see that these people calling us to them, do they have the credibility, do they have something for themselves or is it about the community?

“So, people have known us for five years and they know that our work is focused on the community and through this gathering, we can now move together to the next level.”

 

Adesegun-David who was also an alumnus of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology added that he fell in love with Ogbomoso city since was an undergraduate and that was what made him stay back and establish InnovateLab in 2017.

 

“I have been in Ogbomoso since when I resumed undergraduate studies in LAUTECH and I fell in love with the city and I have not left since then. Innovate Lab, is five years old. we started in 2017.”

 

 

Furthermore, stressing the vision of the company as regards the summit in the next five years, Jesudamilare Adesegun-David explained that “what I see us doing is that we would’ve achieved significant milestones.

 

“First, we want to create an enterprise price funds which is a pool of financial resources that are put together by stakeholders in the community to be able to support all the initiatives that need to be supported.

 

“We have amazing people that have come here today. They have business ideas. Skills that people have to learn but some people did not have the resources, so when we have the fund, that’s a pool of money, maybe a million dollar, that will fast track all the little things people are doing in their little corners.

 

“We want to have a think-tank. What a think-tank does is that we need people that can not only build a roadmap but ensure that it is updated to fit in the most current reality of the world so that we are not lagging.

 

“We want to have a workforce revolution, we want to be able to train 50 thousand young people in the next nine years so by five years it will be about 30 thousand people in cutting tech skills whereby they can access global opportunities and bring all that results into Ogbomoso, and we see InnovateLab and Ogbomoso progress intertwined together, and we look forward towards to have an amazing outcome.”

 

Worthy of note, the CEO promised the event will be annual, adding that He also planned they take the event to Ede, Ikere, Ugeli and many other marginalized communities.

 

“Yes, it is going to be annual, another thing is, the moment we have perfected the work we are doing here in Ogbomoso, we want to replicate it in other communities like Ogbomoso that are normally marginalized. People focus on Lagos, Abuja and all of that.

 

“We want to go to Ede, we want to go to Ikere, a community in Bayelsa, Ugeli, and build those places into amazing ecosystem innovations.”

 

Held in the great hall, LAUTECH, Matt Dune, Investor Remi Odunsi, Professor Ojo Adedapo, CEO Yemisi Isidi, Adebayo Akande, Niyi Abiri, Adeyemi Aderinto, Dr Oladipo Elijah, Professor Stephen Olatunde, Oluwaseyi Gbadebo, Dr Jinmisayo Awokola, Patricia Simon-Hart, Anna Ekeledo, Uche Anichie, Emeka Okoye and Michael Light were among many other top businesses, academic and government functionaries that graced the occasion.