TECHDIGEST – THE UNICCON Group of Companies has launched its first blockchain technology ‘SmartAfri Labs’, to drive the inclusion of Africans and adopt a specialised technology in the region.

The launch held at Uniccon’s Headquarters on Friday in Abuja.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that SmartAfri Labs is the brain-child of Uniccon Group of Companies; founded in 2018 and developed under the STEM arm of the organisation.

Speaking during the launch, the Chairman of UNICCON Group, Dr Chuks Ekwueme, shared insightful statistics to illustrate the poor inclusion and adoption of the blockchain ecosystem in Africa.

According to him, Africa has less than a 5 per cent stake in the projected $1.1 trillion the industry promises.

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Ekwueme said: “We have created technology and platforms to drive inclusion by up to 25 per cent by the year 2025.

“Our Virtual Reality (VR) headsets for example are more affordable, and will not exclude poor Africans from using the technology. This is inclusion.”

Ekwueme said that blockchain should not be viewed as crypto, adding that the notion should be vacated.

“It is erroneous to view blockchain technology as being crypto. It is much more than that, and that notion should be vacated.

“We have built this platform, which is a fusion of Web 2.0 and 3.0 and we are keen on being key participants in the 4th Idustrial Revolution (4G).

“There is a huge market in our Non-Fungible Token (NFT) marketplace as Nigerians and Africans from the creative and other industries can tap into it to generate wealth and add to the GDP,” he said.

READ ALSO: e-RIGHTS: NITDA Supports ASF, France, On Rights Protection Online

The General Manager of Uniccon, Mr Kehinde Ake, said that SmartAfri Labs offered exceptional levels of security, transparency, and efficiency.

Ake said that the blockchain would grant users the ability to transfer assets, save data, and carry out smart contracts in a decentralised and fraud-proof network.

“We have created this technology to allow Africans to stand tall, raise their heads, spread their shoulders, and take giant strides in an ecosystem that was once alien to them,” he said.

Mr John Nwobodo, an industry investment analyst spoke about the monumental impact of blockchain technology in a wide variety of industries.

Nwobodo quoted the 2021 World Bank report as saying: “66 per cent of Nigerians are unbanked and the banked are being recycled by existing financial service providers.

“The cost of cross-border remittance is very high and using blockchain can help reduce these numbers, making cross-border remittances cheaper and defying geographical barriers.”

The company’s Chief Technology Officer, Eval Esege, in his presentation ‘SmartAfri Labs’, took the audience on an experiential journey of what it does, how it works, and its many bundled benefit the users.

“SmartAfri Labs was borne out of the need to create a blockchain ecosystem that represents African values and culture.

“We have set up a partnership opportunity available from today to allow those who resonate with our vision to join us on this journey,” he said.

The launch had in attendance representatives from the National Information Technology and Development Agency (NITDA), the Nigerian Computing Society (NCS),the blockchain community and the private sector.

Mr Ekwueme also stated that the novel product, which is the first African blockchain technology consists of SmartAfri Chain (blockchain node), NFT Marketplace (Create and sell NFTs), SmartAfri Verse (Metaverse),

Others are: SmartAfri eMarket (fusion of 2.0 and 3.0) and UNICCON VR(locally made and subsidized headsets).

The project seeks to increase stakes for Africans, encourage more developers to get into the niche and overall, to drive massive inclusion. (NAN) 

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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.

READ ALSO: How Jie Tech Support Development of ICT Ecosystem in Nigeria

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.

READ ALSO: No Plans To Strip NCC’s Powers, Says Pantami

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- Africa’s first humanoid robot, Omiefe has been built by a Nigerian company, Uniccon. It speaks English, French, Arabic, Kiswahili, Pidgin, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, and Afrikaans. The robot was built as a 6 feet female Igbo character.

Omeife was publicly introduced by the Abuja-based Uniccon Group at GITEX GLOBAL, the largest tech, and startup show in the world, which welcomed over 200 000 attendees from more than 174 nations, last month.

Prof. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, Minister of Communications and Digital Economy of Nigeria, expressed his admiration for the Uniccon Group’s technological innovation at GITEXGLOBAL. Chuks Ekwueme, CEO of the Uniccon Group of Companies, referred to Omeife as the ultimate joy for removing linguistic or cultural barriers in Africa.

READALSO: NITDA: Nigeria’s Economy Will Undergo a Digital Transition

Omoife is not only a multilingual expert; she also possesses the amazing capacity to switch between languages while interacting with others using precise hand gestures, such as smiling and other bodily motions that help match the tone of the conversation and eliminate any interfacial or unreal interaction.

The age of humanoid is here and it is a universal reality, said Ekwueme.

Adding: “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 use the most innovative technologies for efficiency.”

Uniccon plans to produce the robot for use across sectors. Each will sell for US$30,000.

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