Seven years after opening business in Nigeria, MainOne has become a household name in Nigeria’s quest for information technology development and broad band expansion giving businesses hope for growth and competitiveness. Gimba Mohammed, head, Regional Oil and Gas Business at MainOne in this interview with a set of journalists including MODESTUS ANAESORONYE shared his thought on the journey of the company in the past seven years, vision of MainOne in Nigeria, and developments in the industry. Excerpt:
MainOne clocked 7 years recently. In terms of technology penetration in Nigeria, how has the company done and what are the projections for the remaining part of 2017?
MainOne has expanded operationally across West Africa in seven years, from our initial office in Victoria Island, with a staff strength of less than 40 people, to a multinational company operating across nine different countries in West Africa. We have also evolved from being a submarine cable/wholesale carrier to becoming the premier Connectivity and Data Center Solutions provider for institutions in West Africa. We are a home-grown company with investments across all sectors of broadband infrastructure services in West Africa: Submarine cable, Data Centers, Cloud Computing and Metro fiber networks in cities in Nigeria and Ghana. Our efforts in Nigeria earned us the award of the Infrastructure Company license (Lagos) from the Nigerian Government towards implementation of the national broadband plan.
From an infrastructure standpoint, we have invested over $300 million in West Africa and plan to double this over the next 10 years. We have expanded our footprint and network coverage across West Africa growing our metro and terrestrial network in Nigeria and Ghana by leveraging our own infrastructure and other partners, and have enabled the region’s digital economy and technology/incubation hubs, such as CChub, Andela and Hackerspace and support for companies like Paga, IrokoTV, Konga, Dealdey among others. We see ourselves as a start-up and remain committed to supporting the West African digitalization story with reliable connectivity, cloud and data center solutions.
We are building more data centers in West Africa to address the growing demand for content hosting. Our Data Center company, MDXi owns and operates the Lekki Data Center, the first commercial Data Center in Nigeria with a combined certification to the PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security), ISO27001:2013 (Information Security Management System) and ISO 9001:2008 (Quality Management System) standards. Our Lekki Data Center is currently the only PCI DSS certified Data Center in West Africa, which means it is the only facility within the region that can protect consumer security for all businesses that process transactions using credit cards. We plan to build in Sagamu, Accra, Ghana; Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire; and other places that we see a demand for colocation and IT solutions and have as customers’ corporate multinationals and Government Agencies.
We have also ambitiously set out to retain West Africa’s internet traffic within the continent, by building the first Internet hub in West Africa, with a new interconnection solution “Open-Connect” from our data center company, MDXI. Open-Connect is a service that facilitates improved interconnection, collaboration and peering within our Tier III MDXi Lekki data center and the Internet Exchange. The product will enable the creation of an environment that allows collocated customers connect to multiple networks, cloud and content providers while significantly reducing the cost of backhaul links to various providers and it offers competitive pricing in an open access, carrier neutral environment.
We have also had our own challenges such as the first outage on our submarine cable in seven years, in July which was due to natural shifts in the seabed. However, we mobilized technical resources including the ship to fix the issue in less than two weeks. That was also unprecedented. So, I can say we have done well over the past 7 years and remain committed to broadband proliferation across West Africa.
Broadband development in Nigeria is skewed towards the industrial cities; Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano among a few others. What can be done to make internet proliferation more pervasive across the country? As Head of Regional Business, what are your plans to ensure ICT development in the North is at par with the South?
General development has actually been skewed towards commercial cities, over rural areas. This has translated into rapid development of commercial cities like Lagos, Abuja and a few others, while less commercially viable places like Damaturu, Dutse are disadvantaged.
Currently, there is a broadband infrastructure divide in Nigeria. Lagos remains the only berth for international submarine cables in Nigeria. A few other South West cities have taken advantage of this to quickly develop their ICT profile. But this challenge can actually be explored as an opportunity for the Government to support infrastructure extension initiatives across the country. We believe the Nigeria Communications Commission’s InfraCo initiative is an appropriate model for the pervasive and equitable distribution of optic fiber backbone infrastructure development across various parts of Nigeria, to bridge current gaps. Operators need to be urgently supported to build infrastructure for various regions, with support by government. This is the only way we can ensure broadband proliferation across Nigeria. Government also needs to urgently ensure effective infrastructure sharing, at sensible rates.
In order to improve Internet connectivity to the Niger Delta, we partnered with the Cameroonian government on the NigerCam project to extend our submarine cable from Lagos to Cameroun, with a branch-off into the oil-rich Niger Delta region. When realized, this project will provide reliable connectivity to enterprises and cities across the Niger Delta region. The opportunities for development and job creation in the region will be immense when we conclude the project. We have reached out to various stakeholders in the region on this and await their cooperation and support to connect the Niger Delta to a world of broadband opportunities similar to what we have done in Lagos.
To ensure that ICT development in the North is at par with the south, we will continue to advocate for Infrastructure sharing to minimize costs, enable investments go further and increase competitiveness.
You have mentioned data domiciliation as a preventive strategy that Nigeria requires against cyber threats; please explain what you mean by this.
A lot of Nigerian data is hosted outside the country, including very sensitive data such as our financial records and citizens’ information. For example, everyone who holds the Nigerian Passport has his data outside the country. In the wrong hands, access to this data is dangerous and makes us extremely susceptible to cyber-attacks. If the servers hosting these details are attacked, we lose heavily; not government now, but all of us. We need to bring all that sensitive Nigerian data into local certified data centres, which are regulated by local laws. This also saves the country FOREX, generates more employment opportunities for Nigerians and fosters rapid ICT development in Nigeria.
In the Oil and Gas industry for example, local data centers enable upstream operators to retain their data locally as well as provide the capacity to grow their systems on demand while complying with local content laws. In addition, latency is significantly reduced as they can access their critical business applications without routing traffic outside the country. Reduced latency increases productivity and optimizes automation to positively impact overall production costs. And we can provide these services out of the most secure facility in West Africa, with all the benefits available in world class facilities at no additional CAPEX costs to Oil and Gas operators.
You recently announced your plans to build another data center in Sagamu. What informed this? What are your plans for data centers in Nigeria?
The decision to build another data center in Sagamu was informed by the prodigious amount of data that businesses and government continue to generate in Nigeria, especially the manufacturing hub in Ogun State. The Sagamu data center will boost ICT development in Ogun State, a growing manufacturing hub in Nigeria, and also provides better redundancy for all data hosted with MDXi.
We assisted in the development of Yaba as a leading tech ecosystem in Nigeria, we plan to replicate this in Ogun State. We expect that this initiative will also attract Foreign Direct Investment in Ogun State. We plan to build Data Centres across West Africa to support increasing content generated in Nigeria where there is demand. We currently have data centers in Lagos and Accra, and building one in Sagamu. We are also finalising plans to build in Cote D’Ivoire, Abuja, Port Harcourt and a few other cities.
If you had 30 minutes with the President to speak about ICT, what policies would you like to see enacted in Nigeria?
I would first congratulate him on a safe return back to Nigeria and wish him quick recovery. We are supportive of government efforts but we need to work smarter for better economic development of Nigeria. My main points would be
a.Execute critical elements of the Broadband Plan. There are elements of the Broadband Policy that need to be quickly implemented, if Nigeria is to attain 30% fixed broadband penetration across Nigeria.
b.Quickly execute InfraCo in Lagos as Lagos can be successful case study. We have challenges implementing our InfraCo license and appeal to the government to help resolve this.
c.Enforce data residency policies with incentives. Support indigenous players. We should begin to emulate more developed countries include China, most countries in Europe etc who have data domiciliation laws. We must identify and host critical national data in-country.
d.Focus on big ticket items e.g Infrastructure, Healthcare, Education, Power, Security, Economic stability and leave Private Sector to do others. The submarine cable build to Niger delta should be part of the agenda to create jobs for the teeming youths. The Organised Private Sector is willing to support the Government, but there must be certain things in place.
e.Protect ICT infrastructure as Critical National Infrastructure
f.Take government online; all MDAs etc must be accessible online, have a website and ensure transparency and openness.
g.Harmonise taxes and regulation and ensure Nigeria’s Ease of Business rankings via Rule of Law and investment protection.
What are MainOne’s plans for the future?
We are committed to ensuring that every city in West Africa, from Accra to Zamfara enjoy the high quality of life that internet penetration provides by bringing economic development.
