Quoting a report of the Association of Telecommunication Companies in Nigeria, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami declared at the Digital Nigeria Day that the capital flight in Nigeria’s telecommunication sector is as high as $2.16bn annually.
Pantami stated that the Federal Government had developed a policy to promote indigenous content in order to stem the trend of capital flight.
According to him, the Indigenous Content Development and Adoption, under Pillar #8 of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (2020 – 2030) would tackle the issue.
The Digital Day was marked on Saturday in Abuja by the communications ministry, its agencies and other stakeholders in the sector.
As part of the measures to stem the tide of capital flight, Pantami said that the FG have developed a policy for promoting indigenous content in the telecom sector to complement similar efforts that focus on information technology sector.
The Minister further stated that a healthy digital economy requires a robust indigenous content policy to significantly reduce the capital flight. He also explained that there was an urgent need to promote the development of indigenous content in every sector of the economy.
“This pillar aligns with Executive Orders 003 of May 2017 and 005 of February 2018, on ‘Support for Local Content Procurements by Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government of Nigeria,” he said.
Pantami also noted that the infrastructure arm of the digital economy policy would address the need to provide broadband access and data centres required to enable citizens to access the digital solutions.
He revealed that the Nigerian National Broadband Plan (2020 – 2025) was developed to accelerate the growth of broad band connectivity across the country.
Pantami concluded that the plan is designed to deliver data download speeds across Nigeria of a minimum 25Mbps in urban areas, and 10Mbps in rural areas, with effective coverage available to at least 90 per cent of the population by 2025. According to him, this will be a a price not more than N390 per 1GB of data which is about one per cent of the minimum wage.
