The Nigerian government has rated itself high on digital economy as it announces that the country’s National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy has reached 103% development and implementation rate.
Nigeria’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, disclosed this at a press conference to commemorate the Nigeria Digital Day 2022 in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
Pantami said the digital economy sector has delivered on the mandate given to it by the president.
“The ICT sector provided three unprecedented contributions to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country in the last three years, namely 14.07% in Q1 2020, 17.92% in Q2 2021 and 18.44% in Q2 2022.
At each time, these numbers have been the highest ever contribution of the ICT sector to the GDP. The quarterly revenues also generated for the Federal Government rose from N51.3 billion to N408.7 billion, through spectrum sales and taxes from the sector.
Aside from these, Professor Pantami revealed that based on the assessment of the output indicators and milestones for the 8 Ministerial Deliverables, the Ministry obtained the highest grade in each.
The scores of the Ministry for each deliverable is given below:
“Implementation of Broadband Connectivity – 134%, Deployment of 4G across the country – 127%, Digitalising Government functions and processes – 99%, Development and implementation of a National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy – 103%, and Implementation of a Digital Identity Programme – 86%.”
Others are, ” Improvement and optimization of revenues from all operators and licensees in the agencies under the Ministry’s supervision – 594%, Active collaboration with the Private Sector to create jobs – 111%, Empowerment of citizens – 137%.”
Nigeria Start Up Act
The minister said “we now have a Nigeria Startup Act, following Mr President’s signing of the Nigeria Startup Bill (NSB) on the 18th of October, 2022.”
He also said that Nigerians have benefited from digital skills trainings.
“Over 863,372 citizens benefited from digital skills programmes and we have agreements with leading global companies like Microsoft and Huawei, to train millions of Nigerians.
In the area of broadband penetration, he said, ” as at today broadband penetration has increased from 33.72% in 2019 to 44.65%, representing close to 13 million new broadband users.
On the issue of citizens concerns for data privacy, he said, it’s being addressed
through the newly established Nigeria Data Protection Bureau (NDPB).
In addition he said, the IT clearance policy of the government has helped to save government billions of Naira.
“The quarterly savings from the IT Projects’ Clearance Process rose from N12.45 million to N10.57 billion.We aim to create a pool of Innovation Driven Enterprises (IDEs) to accelerate the development of Nigeria’s digital economy. Through our efforts, 355,610 direct and indirect jobs were created.”
He also said the Digital Economy Ministry has developed over 17 policies, including:
Nigeria National Broadband Plan 2020-2025, March 2020;
National Policy on VSAT Installation Core Skills for Nigerians, March 2021;
National Policy for the Promotion of Indigenous Content in the Telecommunications Sector, May 2021;
Revised National Digital Identity Policy for SIM Card Registration, May 2021;
National Policy on Digital Identity for Internally Displaced Persons, May 2021;
The Rule Making Process Regulation of NIPOST, May 2021among others
Digital Transformation
The Director General National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, in his speech said, “With what we have achieved, Nigeria is ready for digital transformation.”
The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission(NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta, called for continued collaboration among stakeholders to achieve a successful implementation of the Nigerian National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS).
Hauwa Abu
