TECHDIGEST – The Federal Government has taken a major step towards promoting indigenous content in the country, with the signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and the Uniccon Group of Companies, aimed at fostering the development and growth of local contents in the Nigerian technology industry.

Under the terms of the MoU, NITDA and UNICCON, a company that unveiled Africa’s First Humanoid Robot, Omeife, will collaborate to develop and promote local content in Nigeria through various initiatives, including capacity building, skills development, and the creation of an enabling environment for local content producers and developers.

The partnership will also focus on supporting local startups and SMEs in the technology industry, providing them with access to funding, mentorship, and other forms of support that will enable them to grow and compete on the global scale.

Speaking during the formal signing, the Director General of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa, CCIE, represented by Head of Legal Unit of the Agency, Barrister Emmanuel Edet, recounted that during the unveiling of “Omeife” last year December by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, the Hon. Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami), had urged NITDA to work with Uniccon Group on ways to commercialise Omeife.

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He said, “We plan to have an application that everyone can use to take advantage of Omeife. At NITDA, we have the Learning Management System (LMS) for a long time, and can be integrated into API provided by the Unicorn group, thereby extending our elements to take advantage of it.”

Inuwa stated that leveraging on Omeife (robot) will deepen the penetration of digital literacy across the country, providing platform for shared knowledge in Pidgin, Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba. This will provide a framework and platform for exposure of Nigeria’s indigenous content internationally.

“Our greatest dream is to nurture startups and companies that will occupy the global space and also be as competitive as possible for the growth of the economy.

“Digital Economy is a great alternative to oil, which serves as a means of income and an opportunity for us to compete because the entry-level is intellect and we have a lot of that across the country,” the DG asserted.

The Chairman/CEO of Uniccon Group of Company, Mr. Chuks Ekweme during his remarks commended the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Professor Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami), and the DG of NITDA for the policies and initiatives implemented towards the digital transformation of the country.

He assured that Unicorn Group of Company will support the government towards the actualisation of policies and initiatives, and do their best to contribute their quota towards the implementation drive for the growth of the country.

Ekweme eemphasised he importance of the AI project in Africa, stating that statistics show that no African country can boast of having 60% AI by 2030, with most countries falling below this percentage. Therefore, the signing of the MoU is a crucial step towards bridging this gap and positioning Nigeria as a leader in AI development.

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TECHDIGEST – Omeife is a female-looking humanoid robot being developed by the Uniccon Group of Companies programmed to speak Pidgin, Yoruba, English, French, Arabic, Kiswahili, Hausa, Igbo and Afrikaans and the first African humanoid robot.

Omeife was first unveiled on 10 October 2022 at the GITEX technology event at the Dubai World Trade Centre, UAE.

Africa’s first humanoid robot, ‘Omeife’ has been built by a two-year-old Nigerian technology company called Uniccon Group in Abuja, Nigeria.

The 6-feet tall bilingual or can we call it a multi-lingual robot named ‘Omeife’ is a female Igbo figure/character that provides language as a service for businesses needing to integrate native African audiences.

She is also a multipurpose and assistance robot. She speaks African languages and is programmed to have a deep understanding of African culture and behavioural patterns. Took two years to create and actually capable of speaking and understanding eight different languages.

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Omeife also has terrain intelligence, knowing the ground and having stability on the floor, which helps it navigate on non-flat surfaces and maintain good balance. It also has GPS for location and state-management for knowing whether the system is standing, walking, talking and so on as well as Advanced Gestures. It expresses while talking, gives hand illustrations, smiles and makes other bodily gestures.

Boasting a good grip, it has the ability to understand shape and how to hold things with its hand. Conversation wise, it has realtime understanding, can actively listen and focus on a specific conversation thread as it’s happening.

It has the ability to switch languages and interact with specific gestures and possesses native accent, complete with pitch and vocabulary detailed pronunciations of words, sentences and even phrases.

Omeife can also identify and tag humans through face and facial expressions; pay attention to a specific item when required; identify objects and knows their characteristics as well as calculate positions and distance of objects it sees.

The group added that it was built with top social interactive skills as it can pay attention to a specific person to keep conversations alive, is polite, careful and aware of words, phrases, sentences and expressions that are not polite in African cultures; safe for kids and not reactive; knowledgeable in various fields and always teachable as it has a learning pipeline to always improve and understand new things from conversations and has the ability to recall, understand old concepts better with new information.

Speaking on the Omeife project, Chuks Ekwueme, CEO, Uniccon Group of Companies, said, “Africa is fast being recognized for its contribution to the global tech ecosystem.

“Through Omeife and other projects, we’re happy to play a part in helping businesses and people all over Africa achieve their fullest potential by providing access to the most innovative technologies for efficiency.”

‘Omeife’ is an Igbo word which translates in English to mean ‘doer of things’.

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TECHDIGEST – Towards digitisation and digitalisation of the Nigerian ecosystem, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has continued to engage with foreign partners on digital inclusiveness to accelerate the development of a digital economy for Nigerians.

Kashifu Inuwa, CCIE, Director General and CEO of NITDA has said the Agency is leaving no stone unturned in the implementation processes of the its Strategic RoadMap and Action Plan (SRAP 2021-2024). He gave this assertion during a virtual session with CDA Lead for Africa, Clayton Naidoo.

He said that NITDA has continued to collaborate with CISCO since 2019 when an MOU was signed, to build an incubation center that will foster digital skills and job creation for Nigerian Citizens.

Saddled with the task of leveraging on the opportunities available to Startups in facilitating a collaboration with CISCO, the NITDA Director General, today, led some members of his team to the Sharp Sharp Startup Company, one of the winners during the 2022 Gulf International Technology Exhibition (GITEX) in Dubai, on facility tour with the aim of facilitating collaboration between the startup and CISCO.

CISCO is a worldwide leader in technology that powers the Internet with focus on networking, collaboration solutions, security solutions, wireless and mobility, data center, IoT, video, analytics, and software solutions. Partnership and collaboration with stakeholders, throughout value chain, and across the industry, allows NITDA to multiply its efforts and scale her impact.

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In a similar vein, the NITDA boss, in company of Dr Yau Isa Garba, the Coordinator of the National Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics NCAIR, (A subsidiary of NITDA), also did a facility to Uniccon Group of Companies Ltd, the Startup Company that built “Omeife” the first African Robot.

The NITDA boss recounted that during the unveiling of “Omeife” last December to the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, the Hon. Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami), had encouraged NITDA to work with Uniccon Group on how to commercialise “Omeife”.

“We are willing to sign an MOU with Uniccon to infuse Omeife into our already established learning models if it has the ability to communicate in four identified Nigerian languages, namely, Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba and Pidgin English, towards achieving 95% digital literacy in Nigeria by year 2030. This will, in turn, enable the citizens employ digital devices for economic purposes’’, he concluded.

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TECHDIGEST – The Vice President Professor of Federal Republic of Nigeria, Professor Yemi Osinbajo has unveiled Africa’s Humanoid Robot ‘Omeife’ built by Uniccon Group, which is human-like and skilled in language, movement, navigation, and behavioural intelligence using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and computer vision capabilities.

Speaking during the unveiling in Abuja, Prof Osinbajo, who was represented by Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami), who also assigned Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa CCIE, to unveil on his behalf, announced that Federal Government will soon come up with regulatory Instruments that will make responsible technology for Nigerians to benefit from.

He stated that the innovation signifies a dawn in the nation’s journey to becoming one of the digitally visible countries in the world.

“It is so dear to us that we are living in an exciting time of technological advancement, where the science of yesterday is becoming a reality in products and services”.

“We are reaching a point where a Robot will create a Robot, Algorithm will create Algorithm, a world without scarcity of resources where every human on earth has access to basic needs like enough food, clean water and so on, with the kind of technology like Omeife, Nigeria can reach that point.

“Omeife is behaving like human, but the target is the super intelligence, whereby the Artificial Intelligence becomes more intelligent than the human being,” the VP said.

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He added that, “We have to go with what the new technology (AI) brought, like not going to farms because Robots can do that, not driving a car which Robot can do, creating furniture, road constructions which all Robots can do effectively. With AI you can cure terminal diseases, we can reverse aging which are all part of the futuristic things that are talking about singularity.”

While emphasising government’s commitment to turn things around technologically, the VP described this as a “technology is a doubled aged sword. What we need to do as a government is to support our citizens by ensuring that they are digitally visible, we need to get data available for AI to be used to make a decision and also to connect the unconnected”.

In achieving this, he said, the present administration has redesigned the scope of the Communications Ministry to Communications and Digital Economy, where several plans are put in place like Broadband plan which is targeted at connecting the unconnected to make sure every Nigerian is digitally visible.

He affirmed the support of the Federal Government for the domestication of the technology urging the tech community to find measures that would ensure that Artificial Intelligence systems are built according to policies, regulations, laws and also domesticate such innovation in line with the Nigerian culture.

On his part Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Professor Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami) lauded the effort and foresight of Unicorn Group for the unprecedented achievement.

He said, “We are so excited today, because most of our games (the Robots) are not African, seeing Omeife looking like African gives me a lot of courage that Nigeria is at verge of attaining greatness”.

The Minister said this and many other initiatives will in no small measure assist the country in building technology locally and to promote local cultures and values.

He also announced that government is working on the National Data Strategy which will also help to make data available for everyone, because AI is all about Data. 

He pledges government readiness to work with Unicorn Group to commercialise the technology.

It could be recalled that the Minister introduced Omeife for the first time at GITEX in Dubai while complimenting the Uniccon Group’s dedication to playing a significant role in encouraging innovation in Africa.

Omeife, a 6 feet tall Multilingual robot has the ability to speak 8 different languages including Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, French, Arabic, Kiswahili, Pidgin, Wazobia Afrikaans and the English language.

The Robot also has terrain intelligence, knowing the ground and having stability on the floor, which helps it navigate on non-flat surfaces and maintain good balance. It also has GPS for location and state-management for knowing whether the system is standing, walking, talking and so on as well as Advanced Gestures. It expresses while talking, gives hand illustrations, smiles and makes other bodily gestures.

It has the ability to understand shape and how to hold things with its hand. Conversation wise, it has real time understanding, can actively listen and focus on a specific conversation thread as it’s happening.

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