This week, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) revealed it is putting the country’s ICT house in order is galvanising the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) stakeholders to seek fresh investment vistas at the forthcoming International Telecommunications Union (ITU) World 2016 coming up in Bangkok, Thailand.
This is coming at a time when indices from the country are not attractive enough yet it claims that the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the sector has climbed to $35 billion.
According to the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Professor Umaru Danbatta, local investors have as well invested billions of dollars into the sector. He enjoined stakeholders to avail themselves of the Nigeria Investment Session and forum discussions to showcase their indigenous innovations and the SME/Young Innovators Hub.
Consistent growth is marketable
Even though the economy is in bad state, Nigeria’s ICT sector has recorded very significant growth in the last 15 years from 500,000 active lines to the current 157 million with teledensity presently at 107 per cent. Similarly, Internet connectivity has risen from 50,000 in the year 2001 to 97 million at the moment. But Nigeria needs to ‘step up’ in order to attract new investments – this, Danbatta agrees to.
According to him, ICT stakeholders need to work with the NCC to elevate the standards set in the industry.
“We are here to restrategise on how we can attract more meaningful investments into our country. We are here to fine-tune our story about the growth and attraction of our sector. We are here to think of ways to convince would be investors on the potentials and capacity of our country,” he said.
Charting the future of the industry
Without mincing words, Nigeria needs to start looking beyond just bringing tech investors to the country and putting the industry’s future into perspective. It is when this is done that the right investors would be approached because the country no longer has to say yes to everyone. But for NCC, it wants to assure the country that it is safe and they will get return on investment.
“Several investors have been here and many more are on their way. We will tell them that Nigeria is safe for investors and return on investment (ROI) is assured. We will tell them that our regulatory processes are open, effective and transparent,” the NCC head said.
On the current potentials for the structuring of Nigeria’s tech future, Ibrahim Dikko, vice president of Etisalat Nigeria strongly believes that Nigeria, especially its telecom sector, has numerous untapped potentials specifically in broadband, spectrum licensing, huge human capital in software entrepreneurship, among others. This is a starting point of a much longer, deeper and richer conversation on the next chapter of Nigeria’s tech sector – and this conversation is long overdue.
