Twenty five of the world’s tech giants and global change makers around the world are attending the two day Fiji Tech Summit 2022 at the Intercontinental Fiji Golf Resort and Spa in Natadola.

The Fiji Tech Summit 2022 is organised by the Datec Fiji Pte Limited team. Yesterday Attorney-General and Minister for Economy, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum officiated at the event.

More than 270 industry leaders, executives and vendors from across the world are attending the two-day summit.

While addressing the delegates yesterday, Datec chief executive officer, Satyen Singh said that technology continued to be the primary catalyst for change in the world.

“Therefore we wanted to bring the technology players who are making innovation happen closer to our clients,” said Mr Singh.

“We have the world’s largest technology companies in a single platform to interact and network and we urge you all to make the most of it.”

Mr Singh said that the Datec team had prepared for more than two years for the event and to see the fruit of their labor was an admiration of their commitment.

“The pandemic allowed us to challenge ourselves and to expand our creativity and in turn required us to be more innovative in how we work,” he said.

HP product evangelist and vendor, Carlin Diprose (right) speaking with the Attorney-General and Minister for Economy, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum during the exhibition at the Fiji Tech Summit 2022 at the Intercontinental Fiji Golf Resort and Spa in Natadola on November 3, 2022. Photo: Nicolette Chambers

“We needed to work smarter and faster, becoming more accessible to each other despite being miles apart and I believe that for many we achieved just that.

“The challenges of COVID did not deter us from staying connected.”

He added that the South Pacific including Fiji were witnessing an increase in adoption in software-defined IT infrastructure, application ecosystem hybrid work and cyber-security acceleration.

“The world is moving into an era of ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence and will experience more digitalization over the next 10 years then past 40,” Mr Singh added.

“Our customers are in different stages of digital transformation adoption and collectively we need to accelerate the transformation to foster innovation and continuous growth.”

Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said 95 per Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said 95 percent of people residing in Fiji had coverage in terms of mobile phone connectivity of 3G, 4G and 4G plus.

He said there were a total of 630,000 authentic Facebook accounts.

He pointed out the following about Fiji:

• 70 per cent of the entire population is below the age of 40,
• 65 per cent of the population is below the age of 65

“As much as people say that digitalization is the greatest equalizer, it can also be the greatest disequalizer.

“As you know we have a young population and we get more babies, biologically speaking, so we have to be able to be prepared for the future.”

He also said it was important for mobile phone companies to roll out Government’s programmes.

“We paid $432million of which almost half or more than half was actually paid through simply on mobile phones – so of course, for the Government it saves money, it gives people a lot more access through not just technology but payment systems and money wallets,” he said.

Credible Vendors

Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said it was important to work with credible vendors.

“We do not want to work with vendors and partners that will simply provide a solution off the shelf and they disappear into the night,” he added.

“We need credible vendors, we want if there are software solutions they are going to be developing they need to be suitable for our environment.

“We have for example in the Government centralized procurement of hardware, a procurement of software working through the ITC steering committee which approves all those agreements, it is important for us as a country to lead from into that space to be very much recognized.”

To tech industry leaders, the A-G emphasised that as preferred partners they should see Fiji as a preferred destination of investment.

The Fiji Tech Summit 2022 concludes today.

Feedback: nicolette.chambers@fijisun.com.fj