Nigeria’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, announced that the Federal Government had adopted the national policy for the fifth-generation network, which will boost new technology and the country’s digital economy at large.
The Minister made the announcement in Abuja at the closing of the 2021 service-wide capacity building program on e-government.
“According to our rankings, Nigeria is Africa’s largest digital economy. With Africa’s largest ICT sector. The country also has the highest number of mobile phone users, coupled with the most internet subscribers in the continent,” the Minister added.
“Now, the Nigerian digital economy’s national policy for the fifth generation has been adopted by the Federal Government.” And I hope that by the end of 2022, we will have the biggest number of 5G subscribers in Africa.” He said.
Pantami went on to say that in 2021, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) completed 499 information and communication technology (ICT) projects estimated at US$367 million.
To promote transparency and accountability, the NITDA acts as a clearinghouse for IT initiatives in the country. Therefore, the agency must clear all IT initiatives per the Federal Government’s policy objectives.
According to Pantami, the government’s commitment to spending on digitisation for government services can be seen in the number of projects cleared in 2021, totalling $367 million, compared to $21.7 million in 2019.
“NITDA, on behalf of the government, authorised the execution of 499 projects to demonstrate the level of implementation of the government’s digital services throughout the country, from January to December 2021.” On the other hand, the approved projects include the backlog for 2020 and 2019,” Pantami stated.
According to the Minister, the federal government had approved 16 national policies for the ICT digital economy.
Kashifu Abdullahi, director-general of NITDA, also spoke at the event, stating that between November 2020 and December 2021, the Federal Government trained 1,376 government officials from 48 ministries, departments, and agencies on ICT.
