Geoffery Onyeama, the minister of foreign affairs, has called on the private sector in Nigeria to invest in information and communication technology to bridge the infrastructure deficit in the country.
Onyeama who spoke on the sideline of Transform Africa Summit, 2017, in Kigali, Rwanda, said that unless the huge infrastructure deficit in Nigeria and Africa was addressed, achieving the Smart Africa Initiative would be difficult.
The focus of the summit developing “smart cities”, with Rwanda spearheading the initiative.
The initiative aims at leveraging technology solutions to improve efficiency of cities, has seen Rwanda roll out a number of developments such as WiFi in public areas, including public transport vehicles, as well as cashless payment systems in public transport.
Currently, the initiative is backed by 11 African countries while more nations are expected to join.
Onyeama maintained that lack of infrastructure was one of the impediments that must be addressed for Nigeria and Africa to develop smart cities.
The minister who stressed the need for investment in the ICT infrastructure to achieve the goal said the Public Private Partnership (PPP) was really essential to driving technology in Nigeria.
“As it was said there is no one technology that is necessarily going to overcome some of these challenges of infrastructures.
“What it just requires, and I think this is what came out clearly, is partnership between government and the private sector and the academia.
“And together, these three can begin to put in place all the building blocks to have smart cities including in Nigeria,” he said.
Onyeama said Nigeria succeeded in the communication sector as a result of PPP.
He said that Nigeria in the past 20 years, was able to engage the private sector into providing phone lines to about 100 million people as against the 400, 000 telephone lines that were there to serve 150 million people.
“You saw how the coming together of the political will and the private sector creating the platform for the private sector to coming in into the sector
In the same vein the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Umar Dambatta also said inadequate infrastructure was the bane of ICT development.
Dambatta expressed concern on how the Smart Africa initiative would be realised without necessary infrastructure, such as sufficient electricity supply.
“As a regulator, I experience some challenges of how we can drive the smart initiative. One major challenge is that of infrastructure.
“Nigeria has about a population of 180 million, equals to the population of all the countries in the sub-Saharan Africa.
“Without adequate electricity supply, Africa would remain a dark continent,” he said.
HARRISON EDEH, ABUJA
