We need ICT Development Bank in Nigeria —Folayan

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6 years ago

A call has gone to the Federal Government for the establishment of an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Development Bank in the country.

Mr Sunday Folayan, the Co-founder of the Nigerian Network Operators Group (ngNOG), who made this call in Lagos last week, said that there was the need for an ICT Development Bank that would nurture and specifically care for the country’s nascent ICT industry.

The ngNOG is a forum dedicated to promoting the exchange of technical information as well as cooperation and coordination among network service providers.

Folayan, who is also the president of the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), said that there was the need for an ICT Development Bank that would nurture and specifically care for the country’s nascent ICT industry.

He said that such bank was necessary because of the importance of ICT for the nation’s socio-economic development.

According to him, commercial banks don’t understand ICT in terms of investment, as they always talk about collateral and valuation of the ICT companies.

”We need a specialist bank that understands ICT and can invest in ICT. Commercial banks don’t understand agriculture, that is why we have the Bank of Agriculture.

Three banks operating below 30% capital requirement —CBN

”Commercial banks don’t understand industry, that is why we have the Bank of Industry (BoI).

”So, we need a bank of ICT that will specially understand ICT and be able to fund ICT development in the country.

”We need a bank for ICT that will collect less that 10 per cent interest, in order to be able to position ICT in the country,” he said.

Folayan said that ICT development had not taken its place in the nation as it had not been fully utilised.

According to him, ICT Development Bank will enable the acceleration of ICT development in the country.

”There are pockets of ICT usage but it is not synchronised. We need to use ICT in full, not partially and we have the population to synchronise ICT,” he said.