In a bid to explore ways of evolving new policies and regulatory environment that support digital innovations in Africa, Google in Africa and Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy (ISGPP) are collaborating.
According to News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), academics in relevant disciplines, who were drawn from across Africa held at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan for a three-day conference which ended Friday, 5th May, 2017.
Tagged: “2017 Africa Academic Network on Internet Policy,” it is organised by ISGPP and Google in Africa.
Mrs Titi Akinsanya-Bolarinwa, the Public Policy and Public Affairs Lead, Google in Africa said that the gathering was an opportunity to bring Africa’s intellectual minds together to identify the gaps and evolve plans to address them.
She said that the effort was to ensure that it worked with the government on policies that directly impact the technology sector as it was critical to the development of the country.
“Technology will always move faster than we can make policies as human beings due to less restriction.
“But this does not mean that we should not make or do enough to ensure we have the right policy and regulatory environment that will support innovation, particularly the digital sector,’’ she said.
Akinsanya-Bolarinwa said that the conference was an avenue to interrogate and look at policy formulation in a sound manner as well as key issues around accessing infrastructure.
According to her, if we are moving forward with digital economy, we have to support it with innovation and for that to happen, we have to support it and invest in intellectual work.
She said that the conference should be able to look at copyright and intellectual protection because increasingly there were innovations that emerge from the market.
Akinsanya-Bolarinwa said that knowledge and capacity building would also be considered at the roundtable and expressed optimism about a better outcome.
“We recognise that we are multinational in Google and we are putting this in motion not to serve our particular needs but to ensure that the space we are doing business is ripe for innovation,”she said.
