By Na’ankwat Dariem ,Abuja
The Nigerian government is seeking the support of the international community for a single African digital market.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Dr Isa Pantami, made the appeal at the privacy week organised by the National Information Technology Development Agency NITDA in Abuja to mark world privacy day.
The Minister emphasised that a single digital market for Africa would enable African countries gain advantage of economies of 1.3 billion people.
“I implore the African Union Commission and our international partners to support Nigeria’s call for creating an African Single Digital Market, ASDM. This would enable the continent gain the advantage of economies of 1.3 billion people. The ASDM would also help us have data sovereignty in such a way as to protect data while also protecting the multinational technology investors,” Dr. Pantami stated.
According to him, the country embarked on the linkage of citizen’s phone lines with their National Identification Number, NIN, because digital market uses data.
“The current efforts of the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy in encouraging Nigerians to register for the National Identity Number (NIN) is a strategic and critical national effort to ensure Nigerians have a credible, converged and consistent database for identity purposes. The value of this would become appreciated with the ease at which e-government services would be delivered, the reduction in crime, and general efficiency guaranteed by the database. Identifying every Nigeria is a soft infrastructure needed to achieve our digital economy objective. Indeed, the needed pieces for the digital economy is falling in place and we are committed to laying a solid and lasting foundation for a digital Nigeria.
“The currency of the digital economy is personal data. Digital platforms require information such as names, emails, phone numbers, geo-data among other personally identifiable information to be able to fulfill their service promise and to do effective marketing. Data must therefore be harnessed and properly regulated inorder to achieve an orderly use of such valuable asset.
When I signed the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation two years ago, I knew it was a fundamental instrument needed to digitally transform Nigeria,” he explained.
Data Protection Bill
The Minister assured the international community and stakeholders of the seamless implementation of the data protection bill when passed into law.
“Also, I assure our stakeholders and the international community that we are putting in place requisite mechanisms for the institutional framework to ensure successful implementation of the Bill as soon as it is passed into law. The lessons from the NDPR would form the foundation for the Act and we hope to continue playing a leading role in deepening data protection and digital economy in Africa “Dr. Pantami noted.
The Director General,NITDA, Mr. Kashifu Inuwa in his remarks enumerated some of the steps taken by the Agency to ensure and guarantee citizens data privacy and create jobs.
“As part of our strengthening institutional capacity to implement digital laws and policies, we constituted the Digital Transformation Technical Working Groups (DTTWG) in each MDA and the organisation designated one of the DTTWG members as its Data Protection Officer. We trained these officials for one month in different batches. Their training was invaluable as it has prepared the public sector to now understand compliance with the NDPR. Creation of over 2,686 new jobs and the creation of data protection sector which is valued at N2,295,240,000.
Nigeria is a global player when it comes to technology of privacy privacy as the country is ahead of all other African countries. “Nigeria is leading the continent and competing favourably with the world in the area of Privacy Technologies. Our expo on Tuesday showcased novel products that left our audience well-pleased. Our innovators presented solutions on how to ease compliance filing process, visitor management, blockchain and cryptography among other beautiful ideas.” The NITDA Boss explained.
Confidence Okwuchi
