Obaseki: Edo deepening investment in tech, infrastructure, culture and people

Godwin Obaseki, governor of Edo state, says the state is deepening investment in technology, healthcare, infrastructure, culture and the people to withstand the shocks of future pandemics.

Obaseki said this during a virtual session at the 2022 Smart Cities Mayor’s Summit holding in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.

The summit was attend by global leaders from the United Kingdom, Belgium, Poland, Czech Republic, France, Malaysia among others, with Obaseki being the only African leader to present at the summit.

According to the governor, “COVID didn’t impact us form a healthcare perspective but a livelihood perspective”.

“Most of our strategy in terms of thinking of our future has been drastically changed as a result of the pandemic. Our focus is on our culture, how to engage the world to preserve our ecosystem, which includes our forestry and utilize technology to drive human development, particularly in the area of education, skill development and security,” he said.

“Our aspiration is to plan our cities, and take the opportunity to build infrastructure We have a 30-year project to develop our state and invest in our people. We are taking opportunity of job creation to impact on young people.

“COVID 19 taught us that we are on our own is to build our people and infrastructure with the instrumentality of technology. Our redefinition of our city is to focus on culture. We want to connect our past to put cities. We have designed a cultural district and would build a pavilion to hold the artefacts being returned to our state.

“We have a technology park that would train young people to take advantage of the boom in the technology sector. We have designed a medical district and we expect to invest investment to help in growing the sector.”

On his part, Konrad Fijolek, mayor of Rzeszow, Poland, showcased the the government’s efforts on the Urban Lab of Rzeszow, a space for developing innovative solutions and ideas for the city, where testing and implementation of those ideas help improve the quality of lives of city residents.

Also, Cammy Day, deputy leader of city of Edinburgh council, United Kingdom, who spoke on the city’s waste management efforts said the government is deploying litter-bin sensors across the city to provide accurate bin usage and align with collection activities.