According to the new Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report by
the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the sector contributed 19.54 percent
in Q2, higher than 18.44 percent in the same quarter of 2022.
“This growth is a result of the number of digital literacy
in the economy; many Nigerians have been empowered with digital knowledge,
especially on broadband penetration,” Ajibola Olude, executive secretary of the
Association of Telecommunication Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) said.
“The industry has also increased its service in the rural
area, this means that technology is gradually advancing to the low and untented
environment in the economy,” he said.
Other experts said Nigeria has not done badly in technology
if the success of the telecoms sector is anything to go by. But the argument
has been that the country is still operating below its capacity, especially
when smaller countries, including Rwanda, Botswana and Mauritius appear to be
dictating the pace on the continent.
As such, unlocking the enormous potential of the country’s
ICT sector, according to analysts, requires a major shift from the normal, the
centre of which is the driver, now in the person of Bosun Tijani
Earlier this year, the Nigerian Communications Commission
(NCC) the independent National Regulatory Authority for the telecommunications
industry in Nigeria said the number of Nigerians without access to
telecommunication services fell by 37.04 percent to 27 million in 2022.
It noted that the number of identified clusters in the
country without access to telecoms fell to 53.1 percent as of the end of the
year.
“We have worked tirelessly to ensure we bring telecom services
to people living in rural, unserved, and underserved areas of this country,
totaling 37 million people courtesy of the consultancy that was conducted in
2013,” Umar Danbatta, executive vice chairman and Chief Executive Officer of
NCC said.
“By 2022, we have reduced the clusters of access gaps to 97
from 207 in 2013. The number of Nigerians again has come down from 37 million
in 2013 to 27 million as we speak,” he added.
On his part, Chris Uwaje, the chairman, Mobile Software
Nigeria said available records showed that the nation’s ICT ecosystem is still
under-performing below global expectations of her endowed creative capabilities
and innovative capability.
He said the above is worthy of note within the context of
the need to ensure that the nation focuses on its core- competencies in pursuit
of its objectives to attain the digital promise.
“And above all, that software is the central pillar of the
nation’s digital innovation and core commerce. This fact remains indisputable.
But Software Nigeria is still at a crawling stage. Alarmingly Nigeria is yet to
establish a specialised Software Engineering Institute (SEI), which represents
the backbone of digital innovation and transformation,” Uwaje said.
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