The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mal. Kashifu Inuwa has made a case for Nigeria to explore technology such as the Internet of Things to increase its food production.
The World Economic Forum has said there is a need to increase global food production by 70% in the next seven years to address food security.
While delivering a keynote address at the IoT West Africa Conference and Exhibition 2023 in Lagos State a few days ago, the NITDA DG said this has become necessary as Nigeria will be the third largest population in the world by 2050.
“By 2050, Nigeria will be the third largest population in the world. Therefore, there is a need to explore how we can use IoT to increase the country’s food production,” he said.
He explained that IoT can be used to automate farms in the area of precision agriculture, soil moisture, watering and many other functions within the farm.
Apart from increasing food production, Mal. Inuwa also highlighted the role of IoT in addressing security challenges, stressing that IoT devices can monitor activities, and movement patterns, and even enable geofencing to prevent incidents such as farmer-herder conflicts and kidnapping.
“IoT could be utilised to enhance oil theft prevention by monitoring pipelines and sending alerts for quick security response. Today, most wearable IoT devices monitor the heartbeats, and blood pressure which is also useful to medical practitioners in providing information for telemedicine and helps people with disabilities or senior citizens as the first point of health consultancy,” he added.
Meanwhile, for secure IOT data, he suggested the building of infrastructure such as data centers, and develop the talent within the country to enable digital sovereignty for the nation to gain independence of digital offerings.
A McKinsey report has indicated that by 2030, IoT has the capacity to generate between 5.5 to 12.6 trillion US dollars in value across different industries.