Nigeria’ll have diversified economy in ICT by 2020 — Danbatta

“By 2020, Nigeria will have a large, strong, diversified, sustainable and competitive economy that effectively harnesses the talents and energies of its people and responsibly exploits its natural endowments to guarantee a high standard of living and quality of life to its citizens”.

This was how the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Professor Umar Garba Danbatta, opened his treatise at the just-concluded West Africa Convergence Conference (WACC) organised by Knowhow Media and Marketing Intelligence International Ltd. (KMMIIL), which took place at the Sheraton Hotels and Towers, Ikeja, Lagos.

Danbatta, who was represented at the event by Mr A. k. Nwaulune, the Director, Spectrum Administration at NCC, said, broadband demands from citizens are growing by the day as technologies converge and that this results in greater benefits from increased diversity in products and services in the communications industry.

According to him, quoting the National Broadband Plan (NBP), he said Nigeria’s Broadband Vision (Vision20:2020) is to be among the top 20 World Economies by 2020.

“Recognising the important place of broadband in socioeconomic development, the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) put in place “The Nigerian National Broadband Plan (NBP”.

“It provides a roadmap and milestones to deliver a five-fold increase in broad Nigeria’s Broadband Vision (Vision20:2020):-band penetration over a period of five years (2013 – 2018).

“The aim of the plan is to ensure available, accessible and affordable broadband services to all citizens while also transforming the Nigerian economy into a digital knowledge-based economy for national socioeconomic development of the Nation,” he said.

Danbatta posited that the 8- point agenda of his administration has achieved tremendously in the area of policy implementation, support for Infrastructure development, improved QoS, competition, investment, consumer experience and lots more.

In his own presentation at the event, the Chairman, ICT Committee of the House of Representatives, Mr Mohammed Ogoshi Onawo stated that as technology continues to converge across industry verticals with an increasing need to thicken the value of entrepreneurships and employability,  that the development of technology skills in the country, especially among the teeming youths would help to harness the new deals of convergence and grow the economy.

While keynoting the major theme of the Conference , “Convergence and the New Deals: Entrepreneurship and Employability”,  Onawo, who stated that at least, around 1.8 million youths enter the labour market every year, stressed the need to enhance our “state of preparedness for the converged space through digital skills development as convergence is already enabling new forms of work and altering the structure of jobs.”