The communications industry is ranked the fastest growing economic sector globally, a new report by fdimarket intelligence has stated and stakeholders in the industry in Nigeria are waltzing with excitement.
According to the report, the communications industry recorded 762 investments worldwide with capital expenditure totalling $61.59 billion last year.
This represents an increase of 82.2% on 2012, and the highest capital investment figure recorded in the communications sector since fDiMarkets began measuring such data in 2003.
Although Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s Finance minister & coordinating minister of the Economy, recently painted gloom for the economy due to dwindling global oil & gas prices, Nigeria accounted for 5.83 per cent of total communications investments in the Middle East & Africa (MEA) region.
“Nigeria will continue to attract investments in the communications sector because it still looks a very virgin terrain. Over the past 15 years total government investment in this sector has been minimal, compared to the huge investments from the private sector,” said Seyi Alabi, an investment banker in Lagos.
Alabi noted that as governments in the various states of the federation continue to invest and improve on their infrastructure, there will be more foreign direct investments in the sector. He also opined that as technologies continue to improve, there would be need to upgrade in the country and this would attract more fdi.
Mrs. Omobola Johnson, Nigeria’s Communications Technology Mmnister, while commissioning a rural telecommunications project in Ondo State recently noted that the country remains resolute in moving towards improvement in communications infrastructure.
Austin Udueni, a Lagos based Lead communications consultant, with experiences across multinational brands like Intel, Microsoft and Qualcomm told Nigerian CommunicationsWeek that the horizon is very bright over the Nigerian cloud in terms of communications investment.
“Nigeria will continue to attract both domestic and foreign direct investments for the foreseeable future. We are still talking about broadband facilitation, a terrain others have long gone past. We haven’t done much in terms of cloud storage..so, you can see that Nigeria remains a very fertile field for investment in the communications sector,” said Mr. Udueni.
Nigerian CommunicationsWeek findings also indicated that the country’s entertainment and broadcast sector is set to attract more investments in 2015 when the country commences digital broadcasting in line with the global ITU mandate.