TECH FUTURE 30
Daily Times Nigeria Thursday, January 29, 2015
ICT will overtake crude oil as Daily Times TECH FUTURE makes its debut this week as a weekly publication on technology. It will track technology and its impact on national development, quality of life and business enhancement in all sectors of the Nigerian economy. It will track the implementation of the Nigerian Local Content Development initiative in Information and Communications Technology (ICT). TECH FUTURE over the coming months will be reader-centric and development-focused. It will offer a compass with which to chart a course for Nigeria’s technological future. We begin the publication with a cursory peep into the mind of the Director-General of Nigeria’s prime Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Engr. Peter Olu Jack. We spoke to him on a number of industry issues, including the need to diversify the Nigerian economy and the contribution of ICT to Nigeria’s GDP, and how to grow the fledgling Information Technology-Enabled Outsourcing (ITES) industry. INYE KEMABONTA brings excepts of the interview.
ICT contributes just over 8% to the GDP of Nigeria. Do you see this figure rising in the next few years? Certainly, as you are aware, when I took up this job as NITDA DG, one of my promises was to reposition ICT not only as a viable economic sector in its own right, but as a catalyst to drive performance across all sectors from e-health to agriculture and solid minerals. Under the able leadership of our supervising Minister, Dr. (Mrs.) Omobola Johnson, a lot has been achieved already. Not only in terms of GDP contribution, but in terms of performance. There has been a considerable annual growth as a result of the effort we have been making in this sector. What strategies and programmes is the sector embarking on to make such an increase possible? Well, a few examples should be sufficient. For instance, in software development, we have witnessed extremely high performance of some young software developers who started ten years ago as entrepreneurs. A good case in point is one of them who has a staff strength in the same range as NITDA’s staff strength and turns over three billion naira a year. That is a very good example of the kind of capacity we expect in this sector. There are many other examples but in particular is the effort we initiated jointly with our parent Ministry in building software innovation hubs. One of the hubs is the iDEA (Information Technology Development and Entrepreneurship Accelerator) hub which has one centre in Lagos and another one in Calabar. Clearly, from those centres, we have sufficient examples of performance. The record shows that some of them are beginning to attract international attention - a reasonable number has accessed angel funding and venture capital and are doing very well. Do you actually foresee ICT overtake oil as the main revenue earner for the country in
Olu Jack the future? The obvious answer is yes; for so many reasons. I will give some international examples before I zero in on what we can do in Nigeria. It’s on record that right after the 1997 financial crisis, South Korea as a country adopted an ICT-driven economic recovery strategy and within a matter of a few years, their economy fully returned to performance. ICT sector alone contributed over 25% of the GDP and we are talking about $200 billion annual income from ICT sector alone. We also have record of the Indian experience from software only. By the way, the South Korea experience was from hardware only. With the Indian’ experience on outsourcing, at the peak, the Indian government was returning over $300 billion from software-enabled outsourcing alone. The truth of the matter is with the software business, there is always the peak and the trough. When a country is no longer competitive, business nor-
We see a bright future. It is all about competitiveness mally moves on to the next competitive environment. So, even the Indians are already beginning to explore how they can relocate their business to Nigeria. The truth is that, in terms of income, outsourcing is beginning to dip. It is worth just about $100 billion now in India. You can see that because of the downward trend, they are looking at other environments where there are competitive opportunities like in Nigeria. I understand that there is a location in Ibadan with 1500 seat capacity out-sourcing centre owned by an Indian firm. And we have actually had a situation where India is engaging us to share the experience of their NASSCOM. We have also setup the NAITEOC (National Association of Information Technology-Enabled Outsourcing Companies) in Nigeria which is equivalent to the Indian NASSCOM. Now that the government is
‘‘We have witnessed extremely high performance of some young software developers who started ten years ago as entrepreneurs’’
looking to diversify the economy, how is the ICT sector positioning itself to take advantage of the new direction of government? More recently, we have a very good case in point where we took the ICT industry to the Gulf
States in a global event known as the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX), where Nigeria was the official partner for a Gulf exhibition. Our experience at the event revealed that there is an increasing interest on the ICT sector in Nigeria. A lot of big players do know that we offer the greatest investment destination when it comes to ICT in Africa. Of course, the rebasing of the economy that showed we are Africa’s largest economy as well as our current position as the 26th largest economy in the world are indicators of how well-positioned we are now in Nigeria. But more importantly, we have some initiatives within the country between the Ministry of Communication Technology and NITDA and other Agencies under the Ministry that offer investment opportunities. Indeed, there are very attractive investment opportunities in Nigeria for potential investors from the rest of the world. I would just cite one or two examples. Tinapa in Calabar has suddenly come alive. Of course, our Agency has investments there. One of the iDEA hubs I talked about is located within the Tinapa Knowledge City (TKC) which is being developed as a partnership between NITDA and the Government of Cross River State. General Electric has taken 20,000 square metres and is investing billions of naira in that location. There is also an initiative known as Lagos SMART City Initiative which is jointly owned by the Nigerian Computer Society, a private sector developer and NITDA. The whole idea is for us to create an enabling environment to develop a smart city like what you have in other advanced cities of the world. We are looking to provide incentives by way of infrastructure, by way of bandwidth, by way of proximity to activity. You know the Lekki Free Trade Zone naturally offers encouraging opportunities to potential investors. There is a new investment focus in that area. There is the airport and sea port. Even our Lagos office is being upgraded to a South West Zonal Office and is located right there in
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