e-Nigeria has evolved to become Nigeria’s most viable annual Information Technology (IT) summit organized by NITDA in collaboration with all ICT stakeholders in both private and public sector.
The conference has become a formidable platform for ICT awareness creation, developing appropriate framework and setting goals for best practices in order to encourage appropriate positioning of Nigeria in the global Information Society.
It is imperative to recall here that the Federal Ministry of Communication Technology in 2013 used eNigeria as a platform to present the Framework and Guidelines for Nigerian content in Information Technology. As a follow-up to this achievement and as a key strategy towards implementation of the eNigeria 2013 Communique, an Implementation Plan, recommending a special purpose institutional structure for the Guidelines, was developed. Accordingly, an Advisory Board was
inaugurated on June 30, 2014 and a National Coordinating Office for ICT Local Content has been established under the supervision of NITDA. The board of the office has membership from ICT Trade Associations, Regulatory Bodies in critical sectors of the economy and Multinational companies amongst others. The Coordinating Office (Office for Nigerian Content Development in ICT) has already established a collaborative relationship with the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) in Oil and Gas in order to benefit from their experience.
In view of the above achievement, the focus of eNigeria 2014 on technology start-ups and young innovators is considered very timely particularly at this time that World Bank and UK Department for International Development (DFID) are supporting Nigeria to create jobs. The support which is targeted at creating Four Hundred and Sixty Thousand (460,000) jobs across eight critical sectors in the Nigerian economy identified our own Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector as top most priority.
Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, “Creating Market Opportunities for Indigenous ICT Products and Services” as the theme carefully selected for eNigeria 2014 is imperative considering our collective desire to create jobs for the teeming youthful population. It will not be out of place to infer that ICT holds the greatest promise for achieving the transformation agenda of this administration owing to the enormous potentials to drive other sectors as well as for job creation. In this regard, the ICT sector in Nigeria is currently boosting the Federal Government’s efforts in job creation on an average of about 12 million jobs from 2012 to date i.e. a significant improvement on the 2.5 million jobs the sector created between 2002 and 2012. This is in addition to contributing about 9% to the growth of Nigeria’s GDP. P
As you are aware, this great nation has enough capabilities to step forward and make global rules and employ Nigerians to build global companies as we can no longer afford to hunker behind the “techno-nationalism” at home while going into the global network of technology collaboration and research. In our quest for achieving vision 20:2020 therefore, we must take advantage of this golden opportunity to create jobs for our teeming youths while diversifying our economy from natural resource based to a knowledge-based economy driven by IT.
Having gone through the list of resource persons invited for this conference and the quality of the stakeholders, I have no doubt in my mind that we will have a vibrant interaction at this conference. I strongly believe that we can come up with qualitative recommendations which in turn would contribute meaningfully towards the achievement of the Transformation Agenda of Mr. President.
Your Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen, you are welcome and I wish us a successful and fruitful conference. Thank you.
•Excerpts from the Welcome Address delivered by Peter Jack, DG/CEO, National Information Technology Development Agency at the opening ceremony of e-Nigeria International Conference- 2014 held at Transcorp Hilton Hotel Abuja on November 18 2014
