The Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) has hinted on new support for technology hubs and start-ups in the country noting that new intervention to ease their operations.
The Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Professor Umar Danbatta, made this known at the ongoing NCC’s Emerging Technologies and ICT Innovation Forum, in Kano State.
The Forum which has as its theme, “Developing Nigeria’s Tech Eco-System: Imperative for improving Local Content”, will end on, August 15, 2019.
The Forum is a gathering of technology entrepreneurs, Tech Hub founders, investors and venture capitalists and other stakeholders.
Prof. Danbatta, said in its bid to encourage tech entrepreneurs and innovations, the Commission has embarked on visitation to various tech start-ups across the six geopolitical zones to assess their developments and challenges.
“We intend to assist the various tech hubs with the right regulatory intervention to ease their operations”, his words.
He said given the wide availability of information technology to serve markets globally, it is imperative that the right framework are developed to enhance the abilities of indigenous companies to maximally explore and exploit local opportunities, as well as remain globally competitive.
Danbatta said it has become necessary to innovate on how to access segments of the Consumer wallets not presently allocated to communication by providing solutions to Consumer needs in other vertical areas of education, health, government services, made available through telecoms network infrastructure.
According to the EVC, the growing pressure of globalization, every government as wells as captains of industry are charged with the burden of finding ways to ensure that we remain competitive and capable of fulfilling local demand.
He added that whereas mobile operators have developed infrastructure to support voice services and access to data, it has become expedient for them to unlock new services and sources of value generation and revenue streams in their operations.
The ICT Innovation Forum has become necessary to promote local content with emphasis on the Tech ecosystem, identifying unmet needs and facilitate Public Private Partnership (PPP), he added.
Prof. Danbatta said the Innovation Forum, which held in Kano was imperative to create awareness and underscore the need to be innovative.
The Forum is vital to the telecommunication industry and the entire Tech-ecosystem, adding that finding local solutions to the challenges of the industry is a key policy of the present administration and NCC acknowledges that Kano state has been one of the prominent state at the forefront of technology innovation in Nigeria.
Kano state, he said has been center of commerce in Nigeria and has the largest concentration of tech hubs in the Northwest region of Nigeria.
The Africa Chair, IEEE, Mr. Chris Uwaje, presenting the Lead Paper titled: “Developing Nigeria’s Tech Ecosystem; Imperative for Improving Local Content”.
He told the tech entrepreneurs that “Time and passion is a critical element of Innovation: Time to think & conceptualize (environment), articulate, develop architecture and design, manufacture, test & secure, time to market and time to support and maintain products”.
In his recommendations, Mr. Uwaje said there is need to upgrade political-will to make digital innovation priority for national development & creation of wealth, upgrade telecoms infrastructure, promote 5-year national digital strategy, make workforce E-ready & establish innovation labs in secondary schools.
