• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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ICT industry experts identify untapped opportunities in sector

ICT

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) stakeholders and players in both public and private sectors have unanimously agreed that Nigeria’s ICT sector, although experiencing some sort of growth, still has a lot of untapped opportunities with regard to creating a truly digital economy for the nation.

According to industry players present at the 2020 virtual Information Communications Technology and Telecommunications (ICTEL) Expo, organised by the Lagos State Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), held on the 22nd and 23rd of September 2020, there is no better time to explore the opportunities provided by the digital economy than now when every nation is seeking ways to overcome the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. And as nations face dwindling growth, deployment of technology is key to economic recovery and sustainability.

Giving her opening remarks at the event themed; ‘Exploring opportunities in the digital economy: The new reality’, Toki Mabogunje, president of LCCI said that as the foremost private sector body in Nigeria (since 1888), the Lagos Chamber is providing, through this Expo, a credible platform to advance the opportunities and linkages in the world of ICT.

“Today, virtually all sectors leverage ICT for optimal performance. This is evident in the financial services sector, where almost all banking transactions are conducted through digital channels; the agricultural sector, where sophisticated technologies such as robots, temperature and moisture sensors, aerial images, and Global Position System (GPS) technology are largely deployed; the consumer goods sector where online stores and e-commerce has brought an incredible transformation to retail business; the medical sciences where ICT applications are now being widely used for telemedicine, more precise diagnostics, administrative efficiency and medical research. The fact is that ICT has become the backbone of business, government, and personal lives. This automation has made businesses to be more profitable, efficient, safer, and more environmentally friendly,” she said.

According to Mabogunje, the ICT sector remains one of the most resilient sectors of the Nigerian economy even in the face of the COVID-19 Pandemic. “But there are still enormous potentials yet untapped. This Expo is one of the major platforms that offer opportunities to unlock these potentials.”

Speaking on ways that Nigeria can tap into opportunities yet explored, Funke Opeke, managing director of MainOne Cable and chairman, presidential committee on National Broadband Plan mentioned three areas that need more activity and participation.

“First is connectivity; which is what enables the digital economy in the first place. A device and then connectedness to be able to engage with parties at the other end. Wiith respect to Nigeria, some of our cities do have 4G services, but too often, those services are constrained. Just before the pandemic, I had the privilege of chairing a national broadband plan committee, where we set a goal of having 70 percent uptake of 4G services around the country, with download speeds of 25mbps (megabytes per second) in urban areas and at least 10mbps in in rural areas by 2025. Now, 2025 almost seems too late, and when we look at the international statistics on download speeds in Nigeria today, our average is still in the 4mbps range even in urban areas, so you can imagine that we do have some work to do in expanding 4G fibre infrastructure across our cities,” she said.

Opeke said while giving her keynote address, that the second area that needs to be explored is cloud computing, as the platforms we are connected to today are provided provided by global tech companies like Google with Gmail, Zoom with video conferencing cloud platform, Microsoft with office automation and video conferencing and share point, Amazon with AWS etc.

“Data first goes to some data centre either in Europe or the United States before we actually connect with each other here. So, the cloud platforms are a big part of what is taking place in the digital economy today. The global trend is for standardisation on these leading cloud platforms and I think the challenge for Nigeria is, how do we engage these platforms so that we’re simply not just consumers of the technology, or how do we start using these platforms to drive our activities and productivity in the private sector? Not just in the ICT sector, but in all other sectors such as Agritech, manufacturing, banking, services as a whole, education, etc. so that it can yield positive impact in our economy,” she said.

The application layer was identified as the third area of concentration as Nigeria remains largely consumers of foreign applications.

“Although, over the past five to ten years, we have witnessed significant growth in this area, with start-up companies deploying application, and starting to gain some traction, addressing real issues in our economy. However, there are particular challenges that we face because these are indeed small companies and when you talk about applications or digital economy, there is such an ease in delivering services across virtual orders that our local companies tend to be challenged in so many ways,” Opeke said.

Experts say that there continues to remain opportunities in deploying connectivity solutions, there are opportunities for local data residency and local data domiciliation and deploying local solutions, using the size of our economy and our population to ensure that we help some of these local applications thrive, because these are going to be the jobs of the future.

Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, minister of communications and digital economy who was represented by Ayuba Shuaibu, executive secretary, Universal Service Provision Fund, said;

“The digital economy is creating opportunities in the emerging world. Innovations resulting from digital technologies are impacting virtually every sector. The new reality is that digital transformation of our economy has become imperative for sustainable national development. Now is the time to quicken the alignment our digital transformation agenda with our economic needs. This new reality and lessons learnt from the ‘new normal’ arising from the COVID-19 pandemic makes it mandatory for Nigeria, like other developing countries, to rise up to the challenge, innovate and occupy her place in the global digital economy.”

The minister said that the government has started working on strategies to create a truly digital economy in Nigeria.

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