In the recently completed Chief Information Officers (CIO) awards 2020, the Chairman of the jury, Mr. Ade Bajomo said: “The CIO award recognizes outstanding individuals, professionals and organisations who during the year under review, delivered business value to their organisations and industry at large through the innovative use of technology. As key industry players, CIOs, CTOs and the IT Heads have over time been responsible for delivering top of the line innovation and business value within their organizations while also being at the forefront of decision making and strategic change.”
Furthermore, he articulated the value of the major business leaders in Information Technology today. “These class of business players are hardly visible nor celebrated in most organisations, however, their role has increased in importance over time as they have evolved from information to innovation and are now leading digital transformation initiatives. In some companies, they are asked to wear multiple hats of business strategies and change leaders. More than ever, COVID19 has proven we can do more with less and these professionals have been leading us through this phase strategically.
He expressed his excitement and honour to have served as the Chairman of the Jury of the CIO awards. He stated that this is just the beginning of many great things to come from the IT ecosystem, including the unveiling of the CIO club Africa.
Mr. Bajomo also indicated that we are at an historic point in our digital transformation as a nation. He recognised that we are in the fourth industrial revolution as a country which is centred on cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), digitization, among other things. He added that, “the beauty of the fourth revolution is that Africans can now work with global technology and global partners to solve African problems unique to Africa and who else to drive that than the people being celebrated tonight.”
In his concluding speech, Bajoma appreciated every member of the jury and everyone who worked to serve on the Jurors of the award and worked hard to conclude the evaluation process with record time to enable the production of the CIO 2020 winners.
He also recognised the project implementation team who worked hard in actualizing the vision of the awards ceremony, the team at Edniesal Consulting Limited for support the vision despite the tough COVID year. He also appreciated the sponsors – Huawei, Global Accelerex, Dell, Microsoft, Signal Alliance, Algorism for their kind support – on behalf of the CIO Awards committee. He gave a special thanks to PWC for verifying the awards and to all guest
He also stated that Access Bank is at the forefront of innovation and Technology by bringing together industry ecosystem participants to solve problems and support start-ups to scale by leveraging Access Banks initiative known as African Fintech Foundry.