MacTay is Using Virtual Reality in Lagos (Techpoint Africa)

Tunde Rotimi, MacTay’s Head of Strategy and Innovation using VR

Over 300 emergency service professionals in Lagos have now been trained using virtual reality (VR) goggles. Inside the simulation, they are placed on the Lekki-Ikoyi link bridge, responding to a life-threatening accident and applying in real time what they would typically learn only in a classroom.

For Tunde Rotimi, who leads Strategy and Innovation at MacTay, the value is repetition without risk.

“It is very challenging to duplicate a high-risk environment,” he says, pointing to how impractical and commercially unviable it would be to recreate real emergencies like fires or major accidents for training. Instead, MacTay builds them virtually.

“We modelled the Lekki-Ikoyi link bridge and trained over 300 people there. You can’t have more than seven participants on that bridge at once; imagine training everyone there.”