The Minister for Communications, Barr. Adebayo Shittu, has disclosed that Nigeria has spent a whopping $70 billion to support Information Technology startups in the last sixteen years.
Shittu, who disclosed this at at the just concluded ICT Start-up Ecosystem stakeholders meeting organized by National Information Technology Development Agency, justified the expenditure, saying Nigeria can only get out of the present economic woes by embracing innovations in information and communications technology.
“So far, Nigeria has spent $70 billion since 2001to support IT start-ups. The essence is to have startups that would help improve our economy and also compete favourably among their peers in any part of the world,” he said.
The Minister added that the government’s effort toward supporting the startups have created jobs, which ordinarily the government wouldn’t have been able to create. “We supported the innovators and entrepreneurs in order to survive and create jobs to the teaming population,” he stated.