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The Minister of Communications, Barr. Adebayo Shittu has decried the spate of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure deficit across various countries in Africa.
Shittu lamented the infrastructure deficit at the Future-Sat Africa Summit 2017, held in Abuja recently where he said the huge deficit is posing as the greatest challenge to socio-economic development across the continent.
He further stated that the deficit has greatly impacted the living condition and welfare of Africans with various countries initiating policies and programmes to reduce it.
He noted that most economies across the globe are becoming knowledge-based with information and communication technology playing a pivotal role as central drivers of the globalization process.
The Minister represented by the Permanent Secretary, Arc. Sonny Echono re-emphasised that the cardinal objective for ICT development in Nigeria was to provide a ubiquitous, robust and cost-effective ICT infrastructure to support the creation of a digital economy.
He said it was in this regard the federal government approved the National ICT Roadmap 2017-2020.
Shittu challenged the organizers of the Future-Sat Africa Summit 2017 to “Pay deliberate attention to issues around technology transfer and capacity development,” so that Africa would have a fair share of the business opportunities provided by telecommunication infrastructure development.
The Minister described the theme for this year’s Summit, “Smarter networks” as timely, and said ideas generated from the summit would serve as input into government various policy reviews processes, such as the National ICT Policy and the National Broadband strategy review process which will commence before the end of this year.
