By Nneka Nwogwugwu
Preparations are already underway by Horasis Global to launch an innovation investment called the Presidential Innovation Investment, aimed to bring Nigeria’s brightest innovators and presenting them to the public to mainstream the ideology of innovative and national problem solving.
Dr Noel Akpata, Africa Ambassador of Horasis and founder of Horasis Nigeria in an interview with NatureNews on Tuesday, discussed in details the objectives of the company and the forthcoming launch of the Presidential Innovation Investment.
As the Africa Ambassador of Horasis Global, could you tell us more about the global initiative?
Horasis is a global think-tank that was founded in 2005 by the former Director of the World Economic Forum, Dr Frank-Jurgen Richter and the vision of Horasis is to create a global platform for sustainability of principled leadership and community building. Since the inception of activities in 2005, hosted by the government of Germany, we have executed several of our flagship events across the globe and we’ve created specific meetings to meet regional requirements expected of us.
One of them is the Horasis Asia meeting, Horasis India meeting, Horasis global meeting and previously we had the Horasis Russia meeting but with the Russia-Ukraine war, we are stepping down on that.
In 2012, I was invited to speak at the global event hosted by the government of Luxemburg and I made the move to initiate Horasis Africa meeting because I felt one continent that gives us a huge percentage of the products of the world containing resources is Africa.
In 2020, we had a robust meeting with the Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council and we met President Muhammadu Buhari, the Governors forum, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria and several captains of industry. The reason was to basically kick start the Horasis Nigerian Council.
President Buhari endorsed the proposed Horasis Annual Africa Summit to be held in Nigeria, are there plans and strategies ongoing to actualize this?
One of the first things we strategized was government buying and without government buying, we can’t achieve goals that we intend to achieve when it comes to a particular nation. We had outlined several initiatives that have also gotten the buying of government after the signing of the MOU last year, joining the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), to represent the government interest.
We have some initiatives lined out and they will be unveiled in a few months to come and basically what we want to do is to help the government of Nigeria redesign its national innovation strategy and to see how national problem solving can be mainstreamed. When I talk about mainstreaming, I’m talking about being part and parcel of national culture.
We are creating a cross border in collaboration with one of the world largest Digital food ecosystem called One Agric in the month of June and that is to connect Nigerian producers to external buyers. We have been able to amass close to about 3 billion USD in purchase orders from governments across the world and these are available to producers within Nigeria and Africa to be able to make that demand. These are some of the initiatives we are running out in the near time.
We will have the official Horasis meeting later down the year and developmental plans will be rolled out.
What should African leaders in business and government expect from the launch and presence of Horasis in Africa?
One of the things we have realized about Africa is that the world has a strategy for Africa but Africa doesn’t have a clear cut strategy to present to the world. You hear of the US-Africa summit, the Japan- Africa summit, France-Africa summit and all these things happening around the globe with these nations putting together a clear cut strategy to engage the Africa continent but we are just following without input.
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With the Horasis agreement, we are looking at it as an opportunity for African nations to come together to now have a strategy to engage themselves to globalize those initiatives especially when it comes to the facilitation of trade and partnerships. We are excited at Horasis that for the first time the company is coming together through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA) that we want to come together to trade with our currency, have our own system and the world will follow our lead. That will be an entry point for African trade ideology.
How can you measure the sustainability of Horasis initiatives in Nigeria?
I mentioned earlier that one of the things we tend to do is to craft a new national innovation and we are doing that in collaboration with the NIPC. We are launching the Presidential Innovation Investment, which will bring Nigeria’s brightest innovators and present them to the public with Mr. President to participate in that programme on national TV. This is to mainstream the ideology of innovative and national problem solving and we are going to be doing this for the entire country to see do that youths can emulate from them.
We will have one million member of that platform to support these young innovators to the highest level to help them prototype their innovations and help them acquire designs and utility patterns within the African continent so that they can sell their goods not just within Nigeria but across the globe.
We want to see this community globalize the concept of design in Nigeria. Something may not necessarily be designed in Nigeria because of some challenges like power issue but it can be designed in Nigeria, manufactured in China and position it for marketing to the global market.
This is what this community will help us to achieve and we will be launching this community officially to help us sustain the concept of national innovation and problem solving. We have sustainability at the back of every strategic move or tactical decision we are making.
How will you handle challenges that may hinder progress of these initiatives?
We are subject to election psycho, change in government because Horasis deals with government of the world. In Nigeria and on the African continent we have done our homework and we are prepared for that. We are also subject to the issues Nigerians are currently facing. The thing about innovation is the ability to work around the problems, the way to solve problems in an objective manner that would help them to walk around and I think we should be able to work around most of the problems because we’ve done that even in the most challenging moments across the globe.
Horasis being an Economic Development Council, what should the common man expect from your presence in Africa in terms of improved wellbeing?
The young innovator at Federal University of Technology, Minna who created a drone is a common man, the man in Kaduna who is producing ginger and looking for ways to push his ginger in the international market is a common man. These are the people that will benefit from the plans we have laid out.
It may look like a top-down approach because we are engaging government, captains of industry and by the end of the day, all initiatives that we are outlining will benefit the common man directly. A national innovation culture will benefit the common man because it will provide a new spirit for innovation and will be celebrated across the country but we have to engage the policy makers, governors, ministers because they are the ones who have the capacity. We have to help them see things in a new light and guide them through the process through our given methodology.
What plans does the organization have towards protecting the environment?
Of course, the ESG, which stands for Environmental, Social and Governance compliance of our member organizations is something we have put in place to promote environment.
Most of the companies that are our members have a robust climate strategy and this is important. We ensure that we take the issues seriously and we are in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
