Dr. ‘Bosun Tijani, the Nigerian Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, has announced the approval of a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to support the delivery of an additional 90,000km of fibre optic cable to complement the country’s existing connectivity infrastructure.
He made known in a statement on his LinkedIn page after the country’s Federal Executive Council meeting that took place on Tuesday. He stated that the addition to the existing 35,000 km coverage will “deliver a stronger national backbone for universal access to the internet across Nigeria.”
He added that extensive groundwork has been done to set up this SPV which will be modelled in governance and operations similarly to some of the best Public-Private Partnership setups in Nigeria.
“Working with partners and stakeholders from the government and private sector, this SPV will build the additional fibre optic coverage required to take Nigeria’s connectivity backbone to a minimum of 125,000km, from the current coverage of about 35,000km. Upon delivery, this will become Africa’s 3rd longest terrestial fibre optic backbone, after Egypt and South Africa.”
“This extensive coverage will enable us optimise the unique benefit of having 8 submarine cables already landed in Nigeria and therefore drive an uptake of the data capacity that the cables offer, beyond the current usage level of 10%.”
“Building on our existing work with the Broadband Alliance, this increased connectivity will help plug the current non-consumption gap by connecting over 200,000 educational, healthcare and social institutions across Nigeria, ensuring that a larger section of our society can be included in the benefits of internet connectivity.”
Talking about the immediate benefits of this initiative, the Minister said that this will increase internet penetration in Nigeria to over 70% and potentially reduce the cost of access to internet by over 60%. This will also bring about the inclusion of at least 50% of the 33 million Nigerians currently excluded from access to the internet and the delivery of up to 1.5% of GDP growth per capita raising GDP from $472.6 billion (2022) to $502 billion over the next 4 years
