The Nigerian government through the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Pantami has released new figures to show that Nigeria’s Information and Communications technology industry is growing in leaps and bounds.
The Minister gives the new figures while speaking at a tea break hosted by Nigeria on the sideline of the 2022 International Telecommunication Union’s World Telecommunications Development Conference (ITU-WTDC) in Kigali-Rwanda last week.
He said, currently Nigeria has active mobile lines cross 200 million mark with 42.79 percent broadband penetration.
“In the last 20 years, Nigeria has achieved robust growth in its telecoms industry where it went from less than half a million connected telephone lines to over 200 million active mobile lines as of April 2022. Importantly, the broadband penetration in Nigeria is now 42.79 percent,” the Minister, who was represented by the Executive Commissioner, Technical Services at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Ubale Maska said.
He noted that Nigeria has grown from Second Generation (2G), to 3G, 4G and now the 5G is about to come on board after conducting a globally-acclaimed transparent auction and awards of two 5G licenses. Also, the country has implemented vigorous financial inclusion initiatives riding on robust digital infrastructure.
Meanwhile, as a long-standing member of ITU Council, Maska said Nigeria has been playing remarkable roles in ITU, such as its chairing the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 2022; chairing the World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC) 2015, and chairing of ITU Council Standing Committee on Administration and Management (SC-ADM) in 2019 and 2022.
He said Nigeria has also chaired the Ad-hoc Committee on ITU Regional Presence; served as chair and vice-chair of several study groups; and provided financial support to the ITU headquarters. Maska assured the participants that Nigeria hopes to have the privilege and honour to continue to serve in the forthcoming ITU Council cycle (2022-2026). Maska commended the government of Rwanda for hosting this year’s edition of the conference on behalf of the African continent.
In his speech during the brief event, the ITU Scribe, Houlin Zhao, extolled Nigeria’s role and contributions as a member of ITU Council. He used the opportunity to seek the support of the other member countries for Nigeria’s membership in the next cycle, 2022-2026.
Maska, who participated as a panelist at the Partner2Connect Development Roundtable High-Level Panel 8, warmly appreciated the ITU officials and delegates from other countries for honouring Nigeria’s invitation to the tea break to have important deliberations at the developer conference.
Focused on “Connecting the unconnected to achieve sustainable development”, WTDC is a unique opportunity to develop innovative approaches and new models of collaboration for connectivity and digital solutions in this final ‘Decade of Action’ to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The WTDC, taking place in Kigali, Rwanda, from 6 to 16 June 2022, features the Partner2Connect Digital Development Roundtable from 7 to 9 June. It was preceded by the Generation Connect Global Youth Summit from 2 to 4 June.
The ITU, through its Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT), organizes the WTDC in the period between two Plenipotentiary Conferences (the supreme organ of ITU which takes place every four years), to consider topics, projects and programmes relevant to telecommunication development. The WTDC sets the strategies and objectives for the development of telecommunication and ICT, and provides future direction and guidance to the ITU Telecommunication Development Sector (ITU-D).