The federal government has commended global communication giant, Huawei Technologies, for the noticeable impacts it has made in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in Nigeria.
Adebayo Shittu, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, made this known during a meeting with the Chairman, Supervisory Board, Huawei Technologies, Jason Li, in Lagos.
He urged Huawei Technologies to increase its investment in the Nigerian Information and Communications Technology park.
He also urged the company to empower the youth with ICT knowledge and skills as well as help in the innovative and affordable solutions to connect more unconnected people in rural areas.
Shittu advised the company to explore cooperation in strategic ICT plan, national broadband plan, ICT development bank, national ICT park, and national smart cities initiatives.
According to him, Nigeria is willing to implement a cooperation deal with Huawei to strengthen areas such as ICT and human capital development.
He said, “I will like to first express my sincere gratitude to Huawei Technologies for their commitment to promote ICT ecosystem development in Nigeria.
“My presence here is a further demonstration of my commitment and a strong belief in Huawei Technologies’ abilities to assist the Nigerian government in leveraging ICT to drive transparency in governance; improve the quality of cost-effectiveness of public service delivery in Nigeria as well as the competitiveness.”
Shittu stated that ICT had emerged as one of the key performers of Nigeria’s economy by contributing around 10 percent to the country’s Gross Domestic Product with 79 percent mobile penetration and 33 percent broadband penetration.
He pointed out that the Communications Ministry would collaborate with Huawei in the ICT Strategy Plan to connect all the states across Nigeria, provide more connectivity to rural areas and provide human and institutional capacity development as well as training of more than 20,000 Nigerians in ICT engineering.
Li stated that he was in Nigeria to do an oversight function on the company’s members of staff on how they complied with regulations in the country and cooperation with the local ecosystem.
He said the company had a strong commitment to making Huawei local in Nigeria by hiring more Nigerians and making a local investment that would contribute to the society as well as focus on the digital transformation of individuals and enterprises.
Li said, “Only Huawei can create true value to customers, local operators and Nigeria government and we will try our best to cooperate with government and customers.”
