For those who aren’t convinced that the ICT ministry’s Silicon Valley expedition isn’t just another Nigerian bureaucratic junket, Plug And Play Tech Center (another stop on the ministry’s tour) were kind enough to make a much more flattering video than the one with Bloomberg West, where Oluseyi Onabanjo, a special assistant to the ICT minister (on local content) delivers the most lucid explanation of the the ministry’s objectives on said trip. He manages to do it in one minute flat — 44 seconds, if you don’t count his own personal intro at the end.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7-eDO3LPTE?rel=0]

Transcript –

This was a really informative visit for us, as you probably know, we represent the ministry for information and communication technology…we’re also visiting Silicon Valley with a bunch of young entrepreneurs from Nigeria, with two managers of technology hubs in Nigeria as well.

It’s a learning visit on many levels…it’s also an exploratory visit. We’re trying to establish linkages with the tech companies and companies* that have possible synergies with them, but even more important for us at the ministry, we are trying to learn about the ideation process, the innovation process. We can’t possibly replicate it, but we can try and find things, models that we can socialise in a Nigerian way.

And that is really informative for us, the fact that you have bridges with so many countries is a great big lightbulb moment, and we hope we can explore that establish linkages to Nigeria.

Cool story.

*I assume he’s referring to synergies between Silicon Valley tech and Nigerian tech companies.

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Bankole Oluwafemi Author

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