Bashir Galadanci, the Kano State Commissioner of Science and Technology in this interview with funmi ilesanmi spoke on the State ICT Park project.
About Kano ICT Park
The ICT Park is a huge project that we are trying to establish and greatly promote in order to achieve our vision of being the leading ICT state in the country and in our vision to see that ICT is seen as an economic sector that would greatly develop our economy; that will create employment and that will bring in a lot of revenue for the state. It is a magnificent building and the idea is to encourage as many first class ICT companies as possible from outside the country and within to establish their offices there. The idea is that these companies would provide jobs, offer lots of IT services and in particular would do a lot of outsourcing.
Outsourcing as you know is extremely popular in our world today where many large and small companies especially in the developed world proffer to outsource a lot of their services. These services could be customer support services in form of call centres or software development services or financial services or other professional services.
When such services are outsourced through an ICT Park to companies in an ICT Park like ours, what that means is that we will be able to provide employment for those that will ultimately execute or provide those services. So you can see there is a lot of value added in what we are hoping to do and we are happy to note that already some big companies have shown interest in our ICT Park. Companies from India, Malaysia want to establish call centres and other IT related businesses in our ICT Park so it is really big business.
Number of Computers Expected in the Park
We are providing a conducive environment for companies to come in, as a government we are not providing any computer. Some of the companies may come in with thousands of computers. At this point we probably will not be able to guess the number of computers that will ultimately be in our Park because every company will bring the required number of computers. Some companies will be in training so they will bring in lots of computers. Others will be in call centres and would also bring lots of computers connected to telephones. Others will be in software development, they will also bring lots of computers so the number is very large.
Partnership
A number of computer manufacturers have shown interest in becoming tenants in the park. The government is providing the building in partnership with private sectors, we are providing a lot of IT infrastructure in a world class state of the art structure. We are also providing incentive in terms of trying to provide patronage to the companies that would be there in terms of getting EPZ status for the ICT Park which would attract a lot of incentives to companies operating in the Park in terms of providing a really conducive environment for work. The government is providing these incentives so that as many companies as possible would come in and would also provide business development systems with the hope of helping such companies grow big in a very short time.
Awareness
We are doing a lot of marketing activities. We have a number of publications that we are trying to distribute widely. We have a website where we have information about the Park. We organize workshops and seminars from time to time, we are in constant touch with different forms of media and we also hold press conferences and so on. We are trying to do whatever we can to promote awareness about the ICT Park project.
Power
We have three generators, each one of them will power the whole building. Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) has agreed to put high tension lines into the Park which will give us better power supply; we are also looking at solar.
