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- The Nigerian government is taking measures to digitise the economy and make digitalisation a key driver of national economic development strategies
- The government is taking steps to ensure that by 2025 critical digitisation challenges are addressed
- This will lead to job creation and economic productivity potential
- To achieve this, the Federal Government, in the National Development Plan (NDP) 2021- 25 has projected about N150 billion investments in the sector
The Nigerian government is taking measures to digitize the economy and make digitalization a key driver of national economic development strategies.
The government is taking steps to ensure that by 2025 critical digitisation challenges are addressed. This will lead to job creation and economic productivity potential. To achieve this, the Federal Government, in the National Development Plan (NDP) 2021- 25 has projected about N150 billion investments in the sector.
The N150 billion will be spread across priority projects in the sector as well as projects essential to the operations of the relevant ministries. The ICT sector is projected to facilitate the formation of up to US $1 billion in private equity and private capital investments in digital infrastructure of approximately US$40 billion.
Despite recent improvements in Nigeria’s ICT sector, several challenges, including low funding and weak digital infrastructure, especially in non-commercial hubs, have resulted in limited the value-creation potential of businesses, the report has pointed out.
The constraints to digitization include, digital and financial exclusion of key segments of the population, intermittent access to power which threatens the development of the ICT sectors, particularly the telecoms and IT services and last-mile connectivity, lack of local funding for promising start-ups and low capacity of digital infrastructure and institutions, especially in non-commercial hubs.
