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Is Lagos State Government low-key a VC?

By Abisola Semilore Abolarin

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The Lagos State Government is bullish on the creative tech ecosystem. To be fair, Lagos has always been bullish on the creative industry but these days it is super bullish on the creative tech start-up ecosystem.

Lagos State has one of the most business-friendly environments in Nigeria. LASG (Lagos State Government) has recently developed a strategic policy to align itself with the tech start-up creative ecosystem. It is essentially priming Lagos to be one of the most exciting and fast-growing tech hubs in Africa as a means to tackle the catastrophic levels of unemployment in the state.

LASG has been creative in its policymaking, to help deepen the creative industry in the state (with the hopes that this will create jobs) it created the Lagos State Employment Fund. Since its creation, the fund has embarked on a mission to develop itself into a business incubator — it provides seed-stage funding, technical skills learning programs, infrastructure and a network of strategic relationships with key players in the industry to further its goal of funding residents of Lagos to create jobs.

It was established in 2016 by The Lagos State Employment Trust Fund Law to give financial support to residents of Lagos to tackle the high level of unemployment in the state. The fund started off by giving grants and loans to small businesses. This helped a number of chefs, bakers, retailers, and small scale manufacturers and other creative entrepreneurs launch successful businesses across the state, hire people, entrench technical skills, earn a good living and position the state as a creative hub. The state was however not satisfied.

In 2021, State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu declared that the focus of his administration is to make Lagos the creative industry capital for Africa by 2025 at the launch of the Lagos State Creative Industry Initiative (LACI. He said that the LACI “project is one I am personally passionate about, as it involves certain pillars of the T.H.E.M.E.S development agenda — education, technology tourism, and entertainment.

I believe this can improve the fortunes of the state at the individual and macro levels using the creative industry and young people as a strategic weapon.” Since then, the State Government has entered into a number of partnerships with leading private sector creative and tech companies to offer skills and training, set aside N1bn as seed capital for the creative and tourism sectors and set up a number of funds and programs to offer find, fund train and upskill creative talent and businesses in Lagos.

The Lagos State Governor Babatunde Sanwo-Olu and the brains behind LACI, Lagos Innovates and LASRIC.

The Lagos State Governor Babatunde Sanwo-Olu and the brains behind LACI, Lagos Innovates and LASRIC
The Lagos State Governor Babatunde Sanwo-Olu and the brains behind LACI, Lagos Innovates and LASRIC

In 2021, LASG under the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, entered into a partnership with two of the leading TV and Film Schools in the state Ebony Life Creative Academy and Del-York Creative Academy to offer free courses to residents in creative technical skills to over a 1400 state residents. According to the State website, the State Government had identified skills and talent gaps in the creative industry and intended to fill the gap through these programs.

Some of the courses include Acting for Screen, Sound Recording and Production, Scriptwriting, Cinematography, Digital Filmmaking and 3D Animation. At the LACI launch event, the State Commissioner for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mrs Uzamat Akinbile-Yussuf was quoted saying that “the initiative was borne out of a passion to reposition the creative industry in Lagos State; to maximise its potentials and to also project the State to the world through the creative industry”…LACI is here to stay and we believe the fourth industrial revolution is underway, the one driven by the transformation power of the creative industries and it is a measure to ensure that Lagos State and her creative industry will always remain ahead of the game.”

The idea is that by further improving the quality of talent in the Lagos TV and Film industry, the compound effect will improve the creative industry and therefore the business environment of the state.

The State Government also recently set aside N250 million seed capital funding for The Lagos State Science and Innovation Council, to provide research grants to researchers that enable local “technology start-ups to come up with local innovative technologies that would enhance the economy” according to Sanwo-Olu at the launch of the institute.

The research institute which was set up in 2017 has the explicit goal of funding innovative research in technology to boost the states socio-development. This is a really good policy because it is boosting the local research capabilities of the state as the fund targets participants from the Lagos State University (LASU), the Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTEC), the University of Lagos and the Ministry of Science and Technology.

More recently, the fund launched Lagos Innovates, a first of its a kind program in SSA that is dedicated to “support the growth of the most exciting startup ecosystem in Africa” according to its website. Its stated mission is to help make it easier to build tech startups in Lagos and deepen the ecosystem.

The program provides workspaces and infrastructure, learning and early-stage investment and peer networking. In June 2021, LSTEF announced that it had partnered with Oracle for Start-Ups to support the tech business ecosystem in Lagos. According to a Press Release on Oracle’s website, “the partnership will create entrepreneurship solutions, training, and upskilling opportunities for start-ups and innovation-driven enterprises in one of West Africa’s fastest-growing business communities.” As if all these partnerships were not enough, LASG also teamed up with world tech giants Google and Facebook in June 2021 to build the biggest tech hub in Yaba.

The zone will be called K.I.T.E. (Knowledge, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship) that would allow for “the growth of funding and financing for innovative ideas generated by entrepreneurs in the tech industry and FinTech space, adding that the ecosystem would also offer free labs for the use of startups to take their innovations from ideation to the next level” according to the State Governor Sanwo-Olu.

This is what I meant that LASG puts its money where its mouth is. While the whole world was experiencing the pandemic and its aftermath, like a true opportunistic VC it was launching a partnership to seize the business opportunities of the moment lol. This is a great initiative and I would love to see many creatives benefit from it. LASG has shown a commitment to seeing programs through to success, and it should be encouraged for its efforts in the creative tech industry. Some points to note, however.

The ecosystem must become sharp and move to protect its interests. It is a dog eat dog world and so therefore the Nigerian tech giants must do things to ensure their businesses don’t die by government decree. Do not rest your oars, LASG is still a rentier extractive government and is only being buddy because it knows, has seen and felt the success possible. I mean Lagos Innovative wants to find the next unicorn.

 

How can the ecosystem protect itself?

The tech creative ecosystem is officially Nigeria’s economic powerhouse after its extractive oil and allied industries (read pseudo industries) and LASG knows this because Sanwo-Olu and his commissioners have been quoted in many interviews expressing the opinion that “technology is the new oil and the basic element for the Fourth Industrial Revolution globally. As a State with a massive population of young people, we need to play a major role in the development of technology, which is an enabler to leapfrog into rapid socio-economic growth. We take technology as an important deliverable in our government’s development agenda…for us to make a lasting impact in the tech industry, we said to ourselves, we needed to build the infrastructure to support the sector.”

Like the telecoms industry, the innovation and the creativity involved in developing the businesses and the consummate profits, cannot be imagined by the Nigerian government so they have settled as tax collectors of said industries and can only wield violent power through their regulatory bodies. They would love to control these industries, but since they cannot even begin to know how to create them they do what they do best, create tight regulations to ensure a subservient level of compliance. Lately, the FG seems uncomfortable with Nigerians expressing their views, a true characteristic of the ageism I spoke about in my last article. And also a complete disregard to the men and women of this very land who have stood up to ensure we all have our voices to speak up. Dissent is now seen as a taboo. Criticising the government is now a crime — you are accused of wanting to depose a sitting president as if that is not something we are allowed to do. Social Media has in recent times provided the average Nigerian an outlet to express their views about its development trajectory. It was this same fiery expression that gave rise to the current government in 2015. The tech industry has seen that the Nigerian government is ready to close businesses through government decree, with I am not even sure the excuse?

Do not be shy guys, you are developing the necessary power that can reshape things for Nigerians. If Lagos successfully builds itself into the foremost tech hub on the African continent, millions could be raised out of poverty as they take advantage of the emerging digital economy and therefore give other Africans permission to do the same. The creative tech ecosystem shouldn’t shrink back from this responsibility but take on this responsibility like the owners that they are. For a long time, special interests have gotten to the top of the government’s priority list through their collective organization and lobbying efforts. The creative tech industry would do well to harness its collective power to make sure government policy starts to protect its interests. By doing this you are providing protection for a whole new class of people that can potentially change the outlook of the country. Funding vetted a political candidate is an option. Funding important court cases and social community initiatives. Direct lobbying about why the young African is the future is an option. There are many ways to leave a legacy. Use the power of ingenuity and creativity to set a new precedent in a continent desperately in need of one.

Despite a hostile Federal Government, the tech hub in Lagos will grow because the State Government has made it a priority. Lagos State has tied its development potential to the success of this industry. The ecosystem will do well to seize on this opportunity.

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