By John Ikani
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, on Friday in Abuja inaugurated Omeife, Africa’s first humanoid to boost Artificial Intelligence (AI) and technological development in Nigeria and the continent.
Osinbajo was represented by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Pantami, who in turn was represented by the Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Kashifu Inuwa.
Omeife, the first African humanoid robot was developed by the Uniccon Group.
The robot is with near-human resemblance, language competency, movement, navigation, and behavioural intelligence using AI and computer vision capabilities.
“We are living in an exciting time of advanced technological advancement, where the science fictions of yesterday are becoming the reality in products and services of today,” Osinbajo said.
He went on to note that the Federal Government had the responsibility to ensure the success of the project and urged stakeholders to key into it to ensure the success of the Omeife project and develop new ones.
He also allayed fears that technology or artificial intelligence would take over human jobs and render people jobless, since it was the human that created Omeife and other robots.
Speaking at the event, the CEO, Uniccon Group of Companies, Mr Chucks Ekwueme, said that Africa has been recognised for its contribution to the global tech ecosystem.
Ekwueme said that Omeife had the ability to speak eight different languages, which include: English, Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, French, Arabic, Kiswahili, Pidgin, Wazobia and Afrikaans.
He said the six-foot-tall female African humanoid provides language as a service for businesses that need to integrate native African audiences, adding that it is a multipurpose and assistance robot.
“We are happy to play a part in helping businesses and people all over Africa to achieve their fullest potential by providing access to the most innovative technologies for efficiency.
“It identifies and tags humans through face and facial expressions, paying attention to a specific item when required.
“It identifies objects, knows their characteristics and also calculates positions and distances of objects it sees,” he said.
