Private sector consumption has been identified as the single largest growth driver in the expansion and development of Information Communications Technology (ICT) in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, according to analysts. Technology adoption amongst large multinationals, and even more recently established indigenous Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) alike has grown at a much faster rate than amongst federal, state and local government entities in recent times. “Demand from the government has been limited so far, which has resulted in a gap in ICT usage between the public and private sectors”, said Emmanuel Iwegbu, managing director of ICT Convergence, an indigenous technology solutions provider. Industry analysts however are of the view that government’s involvement in the sector has increased since the establishment of the Federal Ministry of Communications Technology (FMCT) in 2011.
There is an ongoing initiative – Getting Government Online – across Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) constituted by the comm tech ministry to drive adoption of technology in government, standardise and achieve 100 percent web presence for federal ministries, as well as promote the use of e-messaging solution across government. But private corporates, particularly banks, oil and gas companies and SMEs are expected to continue to serve as the sector’s primary source of business for the foreseeable future, analysts say. “IT is increasingly being seen as a major business enabler”, said Olabode Akinyemi, chief executive officer of Trading Engineers. In the World Economic Forum’s ‘2013 Global Information Technology Report’, which ranks 144 countries on a variety of metrics, Nigeria was also ranked 92nd for internet usage amongst the population and 124th for online government services.
In terms of absorption of new technology by the business community, the country was ranked 72nd in the world. Critical growth areas in corporate ICT services include data hosting and analysis, content delivery systems, data security and emergency backup amongst others. According to analysts, cloud services, which provide remote access to software, applications, and data via the internet are in strong demand amongst local corporate. “Banks and telecommunications firms are driving the growth of cloud computing”, said Chuks Ulu Udensi, country manager at Dell. They say countless mobile money initiatives, which enable the user to send currency digitally using a mobile phone, are underpinned by cloud computing and other various data hosting solutions. According to them, cloud computing also allows SMEs, which make up 80 percent of businesses in the country, to cut down expenses.
“The government can support the cloud computing industry by developing a robust national cyber security policy”, said Olusola Teniola, chief executive officer of IS Internet Solutions, a company of Dimension Data Group. “Such regulations is a key building block for a cloud industry and would go a long way towards reassuring Nigerian businesses to host data onshore”, he further adds. Telecommunications companies in Nigeria are big players in the cloud computing arena. Financial insitutions and oil and gas companies require high-speed, secure digital storage facilities. Many of them currently run their own in-house data hosting services, though, industry experts expect that, in the long run, it may be much more profitable to outsource this to one of the plethora of new third-party operators setting up shop in the country. There is currently a rash of data centre projects across Nigeria today.
“Abundance of data, its rapid growth rate at unexpected speeds, global digitisation and hence higher dependence on data availability, security and integrity and lack of qualified facilities to host them”, according to Mehdi Paryavi, president, TechXact Group Corporation, USA, are some of the reasons for the growth in the number of data centre projects.
The Lagos Datacentre, constructed as a joint venture project by Dutch companies Venema Advirs, ICTroom and Zwart Techniek, aims to provide disaster recovery and data backup services to major corporates. It also envisages being the largest data centre in Africa, with a total capacity of 7.5 MW and 5,000 sq metres. Globacom, second national carrier, which already runs on data centre, recently announced a second data centre, the latter of which will be Nigeria’s largest data centre in terms of capacity on completion.
This move, according to analysts, signifies the growing presence of telecoms operators in data centre industry and the lure of attractive returns from providing infrastructure. Other companies that have built and are operating data centres or are in the process of doing so include CommuniGate Systems, AppZone, Inlaks Conputers, Resourcery, TCC Technologies and MainOne.
Ben Uzor
