Our young innovators, creative talents in N’east need platforms – Co-Dev Founder 

He spoke on the sideline of the recently concluded Northeast Creativity and Innovation Summit 2025, organized by the Co-Development Hub, which brought together key stakeholders from the region. 

By News Editor

 The Chief Executive Officer of Co-Development Hub, Mohammed Bukar Umara has disclosed that there are numerous creative talents in the Northeast region that needed platforms to showcase their talents to the global market.

The CEO disclosed this recently during an exclusive chat with The News Sketch in Maiduguri.

 He spoke on the sideline of the recently concluded Northeast Creativity and Innovation Summit 2025, organized by the Co-Development Hub, which brought together key stakeholders from the region. 

He said, “One of the reasons why we did that program is to be able to spotlight some of the creative ingenuity of the people of the North East, as well as our innovative endeavours. We have a lot of creative talents.

He continued, “We have a lot of innovative talents who needed to be spotlighted and have a light shined on them to be able to inspire other people. But also, we have a lot of other ones who do not even have the platform to be able to express themselves.

” So through this particular summit, we were able to host a lot of activities like pitch competitions, where we invited people who believe they have fantastic and beautiful ideas. They came, they pitched their ideas, and after pitching their ideas, we had very vibrant ecosystem partners that served as judges, and they had selections and,  deliberations around some of the best ideas that were spotlighted,” he said

According to Muhammad, the summit was organized in commemoration of the 2025 World Creativity and Innovation Week, which began on the 21st of April.

“What necessitated that particular summit for us as members of the innovation ecosystem in the North East is  we are looking for a platform that would be able to really ignite and spark the entire innovation ecosystem into something really meaningful, to position ourselves within the global ecosystem, not just in the region, but within the global ecosystem,” he explained 

“And since the ecosystem they operate in states is weak on their own, we thought, okay, if we come as a region, they would be much stronger, and there would be more sustainability.

 “Some of these best ideas received prizes and received even commitments for support from their state governments.  Yobe state government was there and happy to see two young people from its state emerge as the second and third place, while the first person is from Borno, and we have another top winner from Gombe.

“Most of these young people that develop these ideas are not college graduates, who do not have a college certificate, And we had other young people who are not educated, entirely not educated.

Speaking on what the organisation is doing, he said, “They are doing some fantastic innovations, like the harnessing of solar power for creating of mini generators for one room house or one bedroom apartments, very fantastic innovations that needed some leverage, needed some acceleration, to be able to achieve the full vision.

“They cannot be able to turn this vision into something really tangible or something really valuable if the society doesn’t support them. We trained people on creative intelligence, and how people can be able to carve a niche for themselves within the creative economy.

” We also did other training around how young people can be able to position themselves for global remote work, because now we are not talking about your state labour market or your regions or your nation’s labour market, we are talking about a global labour market,” he stated