Government must give priority to ICT infrastructure now!

Nigeria is in desperate need of infrastructure development. These developments will aid the nimbleness of the private sector in the global economy, assure the country’s move from a resource-based economy to a high-tech, knowledge-based economy and ensure future competitiveness. The demand for infrastructure that supports safe and prosperous communities is growing, and increasing in complexity. There is an urgent need to plan for this evolution in a way that transcends short-term political agendas, critically examining the significance of infrastructure as a major driver of economic growth and inclusive development.

In a recent report, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) stressed that improving Nigeria’s infrastructure through prioritized investments will help to secure its long-term success as Africa’s largest economy. According to the report, critical focus must be placed on addressing Nigeria’s weak infrastructure, as doing so will enable the country to make much needed progress in other key areas and diversify its sources of foreign exchange.

As a nation, we have missed out on several opportunities for speedy development in the past. In spite of our huge population, which is a ready market for goods and services, lack of adequate infrastructure has denied us the opportunity for development that other countries in Africa have taken advantage of. This obviously has a lot of negative implications on almost all sectors of our economy and by implication, on the life expectancy of an average Nigerian. It is ironical that a nation that produces more than 2000Bscf of gas annually and flares more than 40% of the gas is actually struggling to keep power generation above 4000MW due to lack of adequate supply of the same gas to most of its thermal power generating stations

The upsurge in infrastructure development in the Telecoms/ICT sector in the last fifteen years should be seen as another opportunity to position Nigeria as the ICT hub for Africa. I believe we have another opportunity now to become the ICT hub for Africa. In the last fifteen years of Telecoms/ICT revolution in Nigeria, this country moved from a tele density of 0.4 percent in 2001 to 100.59% in 2015. Between 2007 and 2013, 24% of the foreign direct investment (FDI) was in the ICT sector which demonstrates the investors’ confidence in this sector. Today, we have close to 18,000 kilometers of long distance optic fibre and several thousandkilometres of metropolitan area fibre spreading across major cities in Nigeria. There are more than 4500 standing telecommunications tower infrastructures and over 10,000 square metres of Data Centre space. Nigeria can also boast of five submarine cables landing in Nigeria today, providing over 10Terabits per seconds (Tbps) capacity of international broadband internet capacity and which accounts for $7b of Africa’s $20b submarine cable investment. At internet penetration of 51.1%, Nigeria currently contributes 28% of Africa’s internet with potential for much more!

As a country, we should leverage this huge infrastructure to position this country as the ICT hub and centre of innovation excellence in Africa. We can generate our own content, host and transmit such information within and outside the country, thereby playing across the entire ICT ecosystem and creating opportunities and value.

Far beyond what oil can do, ICT provides economic opportunities to both urban and rural populations. The high-speed internet is fast changing the way organisations do business, transforming public service delivery and democratizing innovation. Research has shown that with 10 percent increase in high speed internet connections, economic growth actually increases by 1.3 percent. The fact that virtually all new mobile customers in the coming years will be in developing countries, and more specifically in rural areas, means that the ICT platform is reaching population with low levels of income and literacy and therefore has the capacity to transform lives and create massive employment for the teeming population.

With the level of the available ICT infrastructure and the potential for socio-economic development, Government at all levels must create the enabling environment for players in the ICT industry to operate. State Governments should stop seeing the development of fibre infrastructure as opportunities to earn short term revenue in the form of right of way (ROW), but rather an opportunity for the development of their States through which jobs will be created and long term revenues in PAYE and company income taxes could be earned. Also, the Federal Government policy on hosting data locally must be taken seriously with the Federal Government institutions and Joint venture partners taking the lead. Innovations and start-ups should be encouraged and protected by legislation through which more foreign direct investments (FDI) will be encouraged. These and few other quick-wins are what we should be doing now if we must take advantage of the next technology revolution and better position Nigeria for real growth and development.

 

Gbenga Adegbiji