Minister of Foreign Affairs Geoffrey Onyeama and Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) Prof. Umar Dambatta have urged private sector operators to invest in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to bridge the country’s infrastructure deficit.
Onyeama and Dambatta said unless the huge infrastructure deficit in Nigeria and Africa was addressed, achieving the Smart Africa Initiative would be difficult.
They spoke on the sideline of Transform Africa Summit 2017, in Kigali, Rwanda.
The focus of the summit was developing “smart cities”.
The initiative, aims at leveraging technology solutions to improve efficiency of cities, has seen Rwanda rolling out a number of them such as WiFi in public areas, public transport vehicles as well as cashless payment systems in public transport.
The initiative is backed by 11 African countries and more nations are expected to join.
Onyeama maintained that lack of infrastructure was one of the impediments that must be addressed for Nigeria and Africa to develop smart cities.
The minister, who stressed the need for investment in the ICT infrastructure to achieve the goal, said the Public Private Partnership (PPP) was essential to driving technology in Nigeria.
He said: “As it was said, there is no one technology that is necessarily going to overcome some of these challenges of infrastructure.
“What it just requires and, I think this is what came out clearly, is partnership among government, the private sector and the academia.
“And together, these three can begin to put in place all the building blocks to have smart cities, including in Nigeria.”
Onyeama said Nigeria succeeded in the communication sector as a result of PPP.
He said Nigeria in the last 20 years was able to engage the private sector into providing phone lines to about 100 million people as against the 400,000 telephone lines that were there to serve 150 million people.
Dambatta stated that inadequate infrastructure was the problem facing Nigeria’s ICT development.
He was concerned that the Smart Africa initiative would not be realised without necessary infrastructure, such as sufficient electricity supply.
“As a regulator, I experience some challenges of how we can drive the smart initiative. One major challenge is that of infrastructure.
“Nigeria has about a population of 180 million, equals to the population of all the countries in the sub-Saharan Africa.
“Without adequate electricity supply, Africa would remain a dark continent,” he said.
