The Edo State is depeening investment in technology, healthcare, infrastructure and in human capital development to withstand shocks in the event of future pandemics, the Governor, Godwin Obaseki, has said.
Obaseki, who spoke during a virtual session at the Smart Cities Mayor’s Summit holding in Taipei, the Tatwanese capital, said: “COVID didn’t impact us form a healthcare perspective but a livelihood perspective.”
He said most of our strategy in terms of thinking of our future has been drastically changed as a result of the pandemic, saying our focus now is on “our culture, how to engage the world to preserve our ecosystem, which includes our forestry and utilise technology to drive human development, particularly in the area of education, skill development and security.
“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,” Obaseki noted.
Obaseki was the only African leader present at the summit attended by global leaders from the United Kingdom, Belgium, Poland, Czech Republic, France, and Malaysia, among others.