Stakeholders Advocate Increased Investment in ICT

Stakeholders in the Information and Communications Technology sector of the country’s economy have urged both government and private organizations to increase investment in the information and communication technology as panacea to the current economic meltdown.
This was the view some of the speakers at the just concluded World Information Technology conference, tag Adipeng 2009 held in Abuja last week.
Dato’ Dan Khoo, chairman, World Information Technology and Services Alliance (Witsa), said that the current economic meltdown offers ICT the opportunity to create sustainable growth. According to him, the injection capital as stimuli to the depression will stimulate the economy on a short term while an increase in investment on ICT will stimulate the economy in a long term. He cited a report in the United States which states that the injection of $30 billion in ICT will generate 1million jobs; he added that such stipulation can also apply in any other country.
He noted that the adoption of ICT in virtually all aspects of the economy and society has been growing rapidly around the world. “The use of ICT has boosted productivity, created new jobs, enabled more efficient businesses, produced higher quality of goods and services, and led to greater innovation. This has resulted in digitally-enabled economies that are responsible for generating sustainable long-term prosperity,” he said.
Khoo further explained that ICT revolution has enhanced the quality of life from improving health care, to promoting greater transparency.
Prof. Cleopas Angaye, director general, National Information Technology Development Agency (Nitda), said that a major component of effective and efficient IT deployment in achieving any national development agenda for Nigeria is the software that drives various applications tool of development.
The software industry he said will provide highly profitable investment channels for Nigerians; who have acquired expertise in providing the necessary services. He decried the low contributions of the country to global ICT especially software research and marketing despite the available potentials scattered all over the country.
He said government is putting in place necessary mechanism for the establishment of software development parks, as a way of increasing the country’s contributions to ICT development.
“The establishment of the parks would encourage software developers to come together and operate. It will also provide a platform for establishing national research network on software development that will bring together leading scholars and other relevant stakeholders to design and implement processes that will lead to developing software with Nigerian content and develop requisite manpower in the core area of ICT for sustainable growth and wealth creation,” he said.
Mr. Soji Akin-Bankole, ICT adviser to Ogun State government, said that the success of any information technology, science and innovation driven capacity-building policy framework will depend on carefully assessing national needs, establishing priorities for addressing these needs and understanding the different dimensions of capacity building.
According to him, investing in a common set of core issues such as promotion of entrepreneurship; adaptation and adoption of existing technology; both the supply and demand for science and IT capacities; specific social and economic goals; and promotion of interactions among public institutions, academia, and the private sector would guarantee success in building capacity.
“The effort to build up an industry to the point at which firms can compete for global market share does little for the sustained development of a country if the firms in that industry gradually lose their competitive advantage as new technologies are developed elsewhere that better meet the market need,” he noted.
He said: “If world leaders expect globalization to foster sustainable development and sustainable poverty reduction in the face of the global financial meltdown ravaging the economies of the world now, a conscious and concerted investment in education and innovation is inevitable”.