BoI to boost entrepreneurship capacity, job creation with technology hubs

Adewale Sanyaolu

The Bank of Industry (BOI) has unveiled plans to roll out programmes geared towards building the capacities of entrepreneurs to ideate, incubate and launch successful businesses deploying the use of technology hubs.

Managing Director of BOl, Mr. Kayode Pitan, stated this at the commissioning of a tech hub by the Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu.

The BOI boss at a commissioning explained that the tech hub is a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative sponsored by BOI to promote skills development, youth entrepreneurship and job  creation in new technology and innovations. Indeed, the Development Finance Institution (DFI) stated that tech hubs would provide the platform to productively engage youths in the country while also creating an ecosystem that would in the near future add to Nigeria’s economic growth.

Pitan, said these programmes would be complemented with funding opportunities through schemes from BOI and other finance institutions. As the foremost development finance institution in Nigeria, BOI has the mission to transform Nigeria’s industrial sector by providing financial and business support services to enable new businesses emerge and existing enterprises to thrive. Today’s commissioning of the Tech Hub is the manifestation of a deliberate programme that BOI is implementing towards building a dynamic and vibrant startup ecosystem in Nigeria.” Pitan said the Bank was sponsoring the hub in recognition of the ingenuity and creativity of young people in Nigeria, and the need to channel these to more productive and impactful ends, rather than social vices like internet fraud.

According to him, “The overall objective is to ensure that our corporate social responsibility investments are such as will generate better benefits for the country; and a hub like this gives young people an opportunity to add their own quota to the economic development of Lagos State, and Nigeria as a whole.”

“We believe that at a centre like this, talent can be discovered and harnessed, and also it will help to grow the tech ecosystem in the country, get more young people involved in it, make it more attractive to investments and this will augur well for Nigeria, in general”.