Tank Li, managing director of Huawei Technologies Nigeria, has that said a robust ICT infrastructure is the bedrock for digital transformation in Nigeria.
He spoke during a one-day forum organised by the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) in collaboration with the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Nigeria and Huawei Technologies Company (Nigeria) Limited in Lagos, the technology giant said ICT infrastructure is crucial to economic digitalisation.
Li added that to unleash the digital economy potential in the country, issues of availability and affordability needed to be addressed through sound policy and programmes.
He said: “In order to foster digital transformation of the economy, policies and programmes to increase ICT infrastructure and ensure wide-spread coverage both in urban and rural areas should be prioritised to make voice and data services available. At the same time, strategic measures of infrastructure sharing, investment-friendly regulatory framework and preferential taxation policies are needed to reduce sites acquisition and broadband deployment costs in order to bring down the cost for users to really encourage application of ICT across the industries and the whole society.” Li said.
The conference had: Africa-China Cooperation in ICT and Digital Economy as its theme and was well attended by representatives of government, foreign partners, and stakeholders in power and technology sectors at the Sheraton Abuja Hotel.
In his opening remarks, Mr. Lanre Osibona, Special Advisor on ICT to Vice President Prof Yemi Osinbajo stated there is an urgent need to overcome challenges facing the nation in leveraging ICT to fuel the fourth industrial revolution that brings about digital economy.
“Africa must develop its skills. We must know how to scale workforce and move away from business base outsourcing to knowledge base outsourcing. Data is the future and new hope. For us as a country we must invest heavily in capturing data,” he said.
Also speaking, Dr. Zhon Pingjian, Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria, he said his country will continue to share its development opportunities with African countries and welcome them on board the train of China’s development.
Digitalisation, widespread adoption of digital technologies and applications by corporates, government and consumers, is beneficial for an emerging economy such as Nigeria. According to study by PwC, constrained digital economies can potentially realise a 0.5 per cent increase in GDP per capita for every 10 per cent increase in digitilisation. The study also highlights that digitalisation also has a significant impact on job creation in the overall economy: an increase of 10 per cent in digitalisation reduces a nation’s unemployment rate by 0.84 per cent.
