How Self-Driving Tractors, Drones and Virtual Reality will Transform Agriculture in Nigeria

Technology has enabled tremendous advances in every area of human life in every part of the world; but the rate of that advancement has been different and much slower in the emerging economies—Nigeria and most other African countries especially. That the technology community has been abuzz for the past one week because of Mark Zuckerberg’s first visit to Africa—Nigeria first and then Kenya—is something that a lot of young Nigerians have come to see as the beginning of a never-before-seen technology revolution that will sweep across the country and continent. Many young talented Nigerians are using technology to solve local problems, ranging from education through transportation to healthcare, and some of these were showcased to Zuckerberg during his visit at the Co-Creation Hub in Yaba, Lagos.

While these tech solutions to local problems were commended by Zuckerberg, he also stressed, during a Question & Answer session for entrepreneurs and developers, that Nigeria and Africa have the talent to solve relevant global challenges. There are so many global problems today craving ground-breaking solutions; but one of such problems whose solutions can come from Africa is food security through agriculture not only because of how technology can be applied to scale agricultural production but also due to the fact that more than half of the earth’s arable lands, that can be exploited for agriculture without harming the green ecosystem, is in Africa. This means that applying the right technology in agriculture could turn Africa into the food hub of the world, and there’s need to start work now not just for the sake of the world but also for the food safety of our country and the entire continent: Nigeria’s population is estimated to surpass that of the US by 2050, making the country the 3rd most populous in the world, and a strong food security will certainly prevent a lot of problems.

Finding A Curative And Preventive Basis For Mental Illness.

Mentally ill people need help not stigma
Image credit to Imagebuddy

I just finished a 4-week rotation through Psychiatry, and I must say I have learnt a lot about the disorders of the mind. Before the rotation, I used to have this stigma and nausea towards anything that has to do with mental illness and those with it because of the way the society has painted them--they are mad people. But the truth is people with illness of the mind are normal human beings with families, friends, dreams and ambitions; some have good education and are in different professions. Our first lecture introduced us to Psychiatry, and in it I learnt that everyone's mind is like an elastic spring suspended from a hook, with a board on one end. Now, life drops different loads on this board (what we call psychological stressors--challenges and trials), which stretch the elastic spring (remember Hooke's Law in Physics); but almost all the time, our minds will return to their original length after a "normal brief period" of reacting to the stretching (in the form of crying, sadness, feeling depressed, losing interest in everything, fear and anxiety, and so on) when we've got over the psychological stressors (every challenging period passes). It's important to note that some people's minds have higher elastic limits than others' (they can withstand much more severe psychological stressors than others) because of their genetic makeup. Hence, when those whose minds have low threshold for withstanding challenges are faced with very severe psychological stressors, their minds are stretched beyond their elastic limits and what results is mental illness--a state in which their minds remains in this stretched mode for an unusual length of time, in the form of depression, mania, obsession, hallucinations, compulsion, changes in personality and so on.