Nigeria to showcase ICT innovation at GITEX 2018

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), in its continuous efforts to foster the growth of the technology ecosystem, plans to showcase the country’s ICT innovation at this year’s Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX 2018).

Gitex is an annual Information and Communication Technology (ICT) trade show, exhibition and conference which takes place at the Dubai World Trade Centre, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

This year’s event, scheduled to hold from 14 to 18 October 2018, aims at showcasing the global technological advancements and innovations in the domain of consumer electronics. Government and private sector technology institutions also leverage on the opportunity too.

The event provides a platform for accelerating investment-ready startups, expose them to international investors, networking opportunities, partnerships and access to witness emerging technologies that are changing the world. Previous attendance recorded several successes with Nigerian startups coming tops in pitching sessions and winning cash prizes as well as acceleration opportunities.

Generally, startups have reportedly encouraging feedback on the effect of Gitex to their businesses.

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NITDA’s subsidiary, the Office for ICT Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIIE), coordinates startups’ participation at the event. This year, the process started with a call for pitch deck submission from technology and technology enabled startups on July 24, 2018 through its websites, social media platforms, tech and traditional media, broadcast messages and emails to all attendees of previous NITDAs events. Due to the wide reach of the call for application, over 500 submissions were received.

The rigorous selection was carried out in three stages with judges drawn from Government MDAs, Technology Hubs, academia, investors, professional associationsand the ICT industry. In the first stage, idea stage startups were disqualified, resulting into the shortlisting of 143 startups with technology products or technology enabled enterprisers for the second stage. The second stage of the selection was a critical review of the successful stage one pitch decks based on criteria such as innovativeness, the startup is solving a real life problem, business model, traction, competitive advantage and team structure.