By Clifford Agugoesi, Editor-in-Chief
Addressing a hybrid stakeholders’ forum in Lagos, virtually, under the theme: Building Nigeria’s Digital Economy: The Journey So Far, the Minister of Communications & Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami literally shocked the audience with the disclosure Nigeria was running an obsolete ICT sector before President Muhammadu Buhari’s intervention that led to the coming of the Federal Ministry of Communications & Digital Economy(FMoCDE) in 2019.
Pantami told stakeholders that he was not giving them his scorecard since every stakeholder had an input in it but was rather focusing on the progress Nigeria’s Digital Economy journey had recorded.
He said: “…As we all know, our Digital Economy journey started officially on October 24, 2019 as a result of the approval we obtained from our boss Muhammadu Buhari, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, where he expanded, integrated and upgraded our own mandate and also directed us to develop National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy For A Digital Nigeria.
“Prior to October 24, 2019, we sent a proposal to Mr. President over the need for the country to focus more on Digital Economy rather than ICT, which is just a standout sector or most probably, it is obsolete, particularly in the way and manner that the country focused on it before. The request was approved on 17th October 2019, presented to the FEC on 23rd October 2019 and a day after, that is on October 24, 2019, we started the journey officially and that is why we agreed that October 24 of each and every year is going to be our Digital Nigeria Day and that coincided with the World Information Development Day of the United Nations and this coincidence makes the celebration much more easier for us because of the UN World Information Development Day.”
On the criticality of Digital Economy, the Minister cited many publications and reports namely from Oxford Economics, World Economic Forum, ITU, Mobile World Congress, World Information Technology Exhibition Forum, Ericsson, Huawei and many more, validating its importance.
Said he: “In all these reports, we will clearly see that today the most important sector for developing an economy is the Digital Economy sector, to the extent that the European Commission says that the single, most important sector in conducting innovation, competitiveness and economic growth is the Digital Economy sector. McKinsey predicted that the market of Digital Economy in Africa is still virgin with so many opportunities to the extent that even before COVID-19, it predicted that our Digital Economy Market in Africa by 2025 could be over US$500 billon, because beside Asia, Africa is the largest market globally, particularly looking at the population and secondly, Africa is more of a consuming continent than producing continent which explains why many producing continents like hitech companies are looking towards Africa. However, it is a huge opportunity for us because we need to focus more on production rather than consumption.
“This is one of the challenges of our economy today, that our economy relies so much on consumption rather than production that is why we have a problem everyday with forex, the value of our currency and many more and that can only be addressed when we focus more on production rather than consumption and this is a challenge to all the stakeholders here to see what we can do within our ability to focus more on production rather than consumption.”
