THE Founder, Innovative Women Africa Initiative, Bolanle Adewusi, has called for collaboration with the Federal Government and private agencies to develop creative minds of women and girl in Africa to achieve development.

Bolanle made this call on Tuesday in Abuja at the Innovative for Women Forum with the theme: “The women, her vocation and creativity’’.

She explained that the programmes and activities of the forum were designed to be a catalyst that would help community members reach the initiative’s goals and fulfill their potential.

According to her, developing creative minds of women and girls in the society is the forefront of what the initiative is working towards.

“We are trying to partner with other organisation like the innovative hub, Small and Medium Enterprises, Federal, State and Local Government agencies, private sector to impact positively on the lives of women and girls.

“We all know that innovation is huge and it is not something we can do in a day or month but requires a lot of planning ahead to achieve success,” she said.

She explained that the gender gap in innovation activities were not encouraging, hence the need for more aware and participation of women.

“Presently, 9 per cent of women are actually participating in innovation hub but less than 30 per cent of women all over the world are far from international patent.

“There is actually gender gap that we need to respond to because women have fear of failure that always write off their potential for taking opportunity, that is why we came up with this programme.

“So, how can we close this gap, how do we get women to be involved in the innovation activities.

“Though, it is not only Africa issue but global issue. As an African, we want to start from Africa and see how we can involve Africa women and girls in innovation.”

She, however, advised women to believe in themselves, be creative and be ready to be part of solution to Africa problems.

Mrs Nihinlola Fafore, Director of sale, Huwai Technology, said that the forum was a good concept because it brought women from different industry together to speak on the way to success.

“ICT is the technology that drives the innovative ideas and without ICT we will still be stranded.

“It is not easy to survive in this part of this world but Nigerians are able to fight the resilience spirit.

“Without a woman, a nation cannot be born, we are a mirror to our family, supportive mentorship for children, friends and family,” she added.

On her part, Mrs Ademola Sarah, Chief Executive Officer, Dembuq Foods, encouraged women to use social media to market their products and explore the society.

“Business owners are lacking behind because they are not expert in using social media and there is nothing you want to tell the world now without being an expert in social media.”

Anothe speaker, Mrs Sarah Ugama, Creative Director, IBI and Fashionistar, said for women to turn their ideas into money, they needed to develop their skill, adding that this forum has created such platform.

She emphasised the need for support for each other in terms of needs and “by putting our ideas together”.

She urged women to be creative and to bring their ideas out to the market place to contribute to the nation’s GDP.

NAN reports that the initiative is to educate, inspire and empower potential innovative African women and girls by helping them transform their notions and indigenous technical discoveries to tangible products and processes that can solve social and economic problems in Africa.

-NAN

BE

– Mar. 26, 2019 @ 18:10 GMT |