Damilola Yusuf Adelodun is Kwara’s state Innovation Commissioner and she’s pushing boundaries Kwara State on the global map of technology and innovation. In this interview with Gbenga Bada, she shares interesting insights on the prospects and challenges of building a digital ecosystem.

Excerpts:

How did this ministry begin?

Business innovation came from the previous Ministry of Enterprise before we were engaging in cooperatives, in industry, as well as commerce in general. Anyone that wants to come to do business, invest into Kwara State, that’s where our purview is. Of course, we are directly linked to the Federal Ministry of Trade and Industry. However, with this new portfolio that His Excellency changed, we have business, which still comprises what enterprise was before. Innovation, business that brings innovation, brings ideas, and finds new ways of doing things. We key into that, and you know a lot of venture startups are like that, and then we have technology. We cannot move the world without technology, and nowadays business and technology are almost hand in hand. So, now we also have a direct link to the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.

Are you the perennial head of the Ministry?

No, I’m actually not. There were two commissioners prior to my resumption.

So, how have you been able to chart your own course as a commissioner, and to also make sure that you leave your own legacy of impact on the industry?

So, Kwara States is very, very unique in the sense that it’s not about one person’s legacy. It’s about the vision of our leader, His Excellency, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq. Every commissioner that works in or has taken up my role, and any essays that I’ve taken up in terms of innovation, technology, and every ministry, it’s very important for us to work hand in hand. We all have a very common vision. The vision of His Excellency is in Youth. He’s very big on youth. He’s very big on Women. As you can see, actually, I think we have more women commissioners than men in Kwara States. And he’s also very big on business and making sure that the economy grows. He’s also very big on the environment. You can see how clean Kwara State is. And in terms of roads, we have done countless amounts of roads. I think if there’s a record, His Excellency will actually get the record for the governor that has actually done the most roads in their tenure. Because he wants there to be accessibility in the state. If there’s no accessibility, there’s no trade. So, in terms of legacy, I can say that one of the key projects that I’ve been very lucky to head is the Ilorin Innovation Hub. As in the name, it’s innovation and technology. It’s more of a large ICC center. It’s the biggest in West Africa because of the size. We also have a partnership with IHS Towers. And there’s already about a fund of almost one billion Naira put for the running and for the programs. About one billion to two billion that is already put in place for all the programs, training, as well as startups and VCs that will come here. We have a mandate to at least bring up two unicorns before the end of 2025.

What do you think Kwara is doing, innovation wise?

Interestingly enough, Kwara has a big tech community. We have a very big tech community. The CEO and founder of Kuda is actually in Kwara. There’s a lot of business. There’s even a tech education hub that came up that has been to the UK, to America and the rest. So in terms of tech hub, Kwara is it. And we want Kwara to be the next Silicon Valley. If you think tech, we want you to think Kwara, not Lagos, not Abuja, not anywhere. That is one of the visions and the reasons why we have the Ilorin Innovation Hub. Ilorin Innovation Hub is the parent. We are also doing ICT centers and ICT hubs around different locations in Kwara, both in the south, in the northern area, and even partnering with TIC to make sure that there are different hubs around that gravitate towards Ilorin Innovation Hub. So it’s not just only in Ilorin. We want to generate talent across Kwara State.

Quite a number of creative people in the building. What does your ministry has to do with this?

The Sugar Film Factory is actually under the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Technology. It’s the brainchild of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Technology. People forget that entertainment and culture has a business element of it. And we come in the business element. That’s why we founded the Sugar Film Factory. It was actually a factory before. It was the Sugar Tate Factory. It was very morbid. If you see the pictures, it was very run down. So we took over and we refurbished everything to the structure you can see now. With the studios, they have five studios, all equipped. You can do news, you can do podcasts, you can do your movie production and the rest. They also have a training institute where they train talent, actors, producers, writers, a number of all the various subsections in the entertainment industry. So we are linked to Sugar Film Factory because we are looking at the business of culture and the business of entertainment and the talent and to generate it. And you can see that Nollywood movies are actually booming and coming up. They represent a number of revenue that comes to Nigeria. And we see that value and we want to key into it.

With all of this, what exactly would you say your ministry has done well? Or do you think your ministry is trying to push with the partnership that Kwara State has?

I think we have done well in the sense that we have sponsored a large majority of Best of Nollywood. We hosted them to come into Kwara any amount of support that they needed. We provided it. In terms of financial, immediately we had a discussion. We did full sponsorship. So for Best of Nollywood, we looked at the benefit they could bring to the state as well as the benefit of us showcasing Kwara and then coming. And I think the event has actually been very, very successful. And we are looking forward to having more of such in Kwara State.

You said you have innovation hubs in some of the local governments in Kwara state so how does that allow the adolescent community to tap into that? For example, we had a meeting here today where the First Lady went to children from different local governments. Those children eventually are the ones that will develop into the innovators of tomorrow. How do these hubs provide for those children as a safe space for them to learn, create and also interact with people?

One of the reasons why we decided to put an ICT centre, an innovation hub in Shonga, which will start construction about next month, is that we looked at the surrounding area. There’s no ICT centre for them to even do CBT tests. We wanted there to be facilities like computers, internet, because we have a lot of programmes coming from the federal government like the 3MTT Plus program, the Empower the Local Governments initiative. And even for us, His Excellency has empowered the SAO Innovation in Kwara State to do different programs in terms of teaching students, a lot of them from age three upwards. We have age three, we have age four, which are excelling in their coding school. We have age 15 that are slowly budding tech talents. And even now they’re going to do a crash course, a camp crash course during their summer break across the different local governments. Every local government will pick critical schools in which this will be taught. But some of the schools don’t have the necessary facilities to facilitate this change. So those are what we are looking at. Even, like we said, Innovation Hub has the money to power programmes to these various areas. We can’t always bring all of them. They are young students. We can’t always bring all of them to Ilorin to learn. So those programmes will now trickle into the Innovation Hubs that are in their various local governments. So they will be able to benefit from the training. And the training cuts across different age groups, like I said. You have three+, you have five-year-olds, you have 15-year-olds, you have 18-year-olds. We even have people that are in secondary school and universities that want to enter into tech. They don’t know how to enter into tech. You can just take a programme. And most of these programs are free.

Could you tell us about some of the success stories that you’ve had with some of the people that you’ve been able to work with? Like you said you wanted to be a Silicon Valley officer, to have unicorns and stuff like that. So are there particular people that you’ve worked with, that you’ve partnered with, that have had success stories?

So like I said, we have partnered with IHS Towers. We have done two or three cartoons, done by the MD of Sugarfree Factory, Temi Kolawole. The SA Innovation has done four programmes already, targeted towards the different local governments, also different secondary schools across Ilorin. And I’ve even met a five-year-old boy that showed me coding and coded for me. It was quite interesting. We love Innovation Hub and bring us to Sugarfree Factory because they are the hosts. We are here for them. And as you can see from the facility, they are writers, they are content creators, and they will actually be doing training here very soon. I think it will start in January for film producers. There is a makeup artist that is actually very, very good. I’m sure she will also be doing some makeup classes. We are also very open to some partnership. We have started discussing with some key producers and artists in the industry that have certain programmes that they want to come in for. So we are just in the middle of discussions and negotiations. There will be a movie that will be starting tomorrow here.

This is the first?

No, this is not the first. They have already done two films here.

Earlier on you spoke about the property being a sugar factory…

Yes, that’s where the name came from.

Was it a government owned facility?

Yes, it had some ties to the government but to give you better information I’ll have to come back to you.

Quickly, before we round off, because I understand that you have to also hit the road. You mentioned, I know you don’t want to talk about the hub because we don’t want to take the shine off the Sugar Film Factory, but you mentioned what you did with the hub creation and all that and the things you’ve done for children between ages. Do you have an idea of the numbers your ministry has been able to…

It’s important to know that my ministry is a supervising ministry. The same way we have Sugar Film Factory and I supervise it and they have their own entity that runs it to make sure there is efficiency. Ilorin Innovation Hub is also under my ministry from the name Innovation Technology and they have their own entity as well which manages it. We also have the SA of Innovation. So if I look at the program that my ministry is directly involved with, the programmes the SA of Innovation has done, the programme MD of Innovation, even though the Innovation Hub we’re getting ready now, they’ve actually done quite a number of programs, cartons, support to develop a space. We have a Kwara tech conference that just ended, Kwara Build as well. I would say that we have done a programme that has touched I think no less than 3,000 this year.

There are some people that might say that why innovation, people are hungry, people are not eating, people need to eat and stuff like that. What do you say to that?

Innovation and let me even bring entertainment into this, are the pathway to the future. His Excellency always believes that, you know the saying of feed a man, you feed him once. I don’t know if I’m getting it.

You can give a man a fish…

Exactly. So when you do a lot of these training, even some of the people that have passed through these training, a lot of them have remote jobs that they are earning from. Yes. This also brings IGR into the states. You learn software development, coding, even hardware, which is something that we don’t really look too much into in Nigeria. And we have the workforce to be able to do chips.

So I wanted you to throw more light away from the technology and the innovation aspect to the business side of it. Because I know thanks might be a little, our parents, some of our parents are not able to understand it…

Yes, of course. But like I said, the way to the future is entertainment. And entertainment, if you can do it right, you earn money from YouTube. YouTube will pay you money when you have enough viewership and the rest. And all of this is not in Naira. So you are basically already feeding yourself and you don’t even have to leave your location. But like you said, for business, for business, we power a lot of businesses. We have one, which does a number of cash grants to businesses for entrepreneurs. You can have nano-skilled businesses, small-scale businesses, or even large-scale. You have to do a presentation of your business plan and the rest. And they make sure to give you grants on this. We also have a partnership with the World Bank as well. In terms of the NGCARES programme, to be honest, I think, Kwara is one of the top beneficiaries because everybody has been able to have training on how to package their business and what not. Even with market women, they are directly under us. So we are working with various companies to do partnerships. Show them how to use the accounting system. Because to be honest, you won’t believe how much cash these women go through on a weekly basis.

So talking about, you’ve spoken about achievements so far. So what are your challenges?

There are not many challenges. But the challenge is people expect the government to give you grants, grants, grants. So the first thing you meet when you meet people is, “give me grants.” How many grants can you give? And to be honest, we give grants. But at the end of the day, when we look at the conversion rate of grants to successful businesses, it’s quite small.

Then while on that, you’ve mentioned, you’ve talked about technology, innovation hubs and all that. What are your plans for women and youth, especially the unemployed, to get them out of poverty in Kwara State?

So this innovation and technology is targeted a lot towards youth. Majority, even 100% of the people that benefit from it are youths. Youths between age 25 to 45, both male and female and like I said, His Excellency is very, very passionate about Women. We have a lot of running programmes for women. Both women in the marketplace, both women in tech, women in education because there’s a lot of education programs like KwaraLend. The SA of education is a woman. So she makes sure to direct women a lot into STEM programmes.

So you’re a young woman. How have you been able to navigate your job? Because you not only have to do your job, but you also have to deal with the politics of your business. So how have you been able to navigate your job? Especially from people who might want to doubt you or doubt your abilities?

Yes, I think that’s a normal thing. I think all women in any industry will tell you that they have seen pepper and they have challenges in any area that they are in. It’s just a normal thing. But when they prove themselves, they prove themselves. For any job you are in, people will look at you and they will doubt you. You just have to make sure you prove yourself. Unfortunately, you might have to prove yourself two times if you’re a woman. And I have to prove myself three times also because I’m young. So I think less of the fact that I’m a woman, more of the fact that I’m young. That creates an issue. But then the culture is also directed by the leader. And the tone of His Excellency has always been, I pick people for efficiency. So even as an entry, nobody can doubt that because that is the tone from the top.

Finally, the government, like you rightly said, is particular about the women’s vote. The women’s vote. The female vote, you know, aside from every other thing is done. What feedback have you heard or have you gotten from him concerning your ministry that has helped you say, “okay, I think I can do more than I’ve done?”

It’s a lot. It’s a lot because as we’re doing every project, he’s aware of every area and he makes corrections as we move forward. He’s not someone that just gives you go and do, and then you do, and then you come and pull back. You’re updating him as everything is moving. So I can’t tell you more than that.