The World Bank has prompted the federal government to increase its broadband penetration in the rural areas to enable the local residers have increased access to Internet services to boost the digital economy drive.
The World Bank country director, Shubham Chaudhuri made the call on the sidelines of the demoiselle Digital Economy Regional Conference in Abuja on Tuesday, which was organised by the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economic and agencies under it.
Speaking during the opening of the two-day conference with the theme “Positioning West African Digital Economy for the Future ”, Chaudhuri said there was great eventuality in the Nigeria’s digital sector, indeed as he called for further reforms.
The ministry also did talk about broadband penetration. It’s important to make sure that no one
is left before especially poor families substantially in the rural areas.
I think the crucial thing is, how do we make sure that every person, no matter where they’re in Nigeria has that same access to the digital economy?
Nigeria’s youth population has tremendous potential but you have to insure that there’s equal access to broadband penetration.
In places like Lagos, Abuja there’s a lot of energy formerly but what the Minister has said is getting that access out to the rural areas so that every child and every youthful person has that access.
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I think the telecom sector has been relatively crucial to Nigeria’s adaptability in the last three years, ”he said.
The World Bank country director also advised state governments to unite with the federal government and private sector to invest by laying fiber optics in the areas.
I urges state to cooperate with federal government and make it easy for private enterprises to lay the filaments for investment.
Second is digital skills especially for the girl child to have access to digital skills so that they can be suitable to contribute to areas of growth going forward, ” he said.
The Minister of Comminications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Pantami, during his remarks at the occasion, blazoned that by April this time, every state would have civil government optical fiber string content.
Pantami further said that price of data in the country has in the last two times been reduced by 70 per cent despite rising cost of product.
As of moment, we’re furnishing civil government optical fiber string to every state. We’ve them in nothing lower than 34 countries and by April this time, it’ll be available in each and every state.
In Nigeria’s National Broadband plan we’ve a target to reduce the price of 1 gigabyte from 1200 to 390 Naira but as of moment, two times before the deadline, the current price of 1 gigabyte is 350.
The reduction of further than 70 per cent is a huge achievement because the price of every other commodity increases.
If you complain about diesel the ICT sector consume further diesel than any other sectors.
We’re affected by cost of diesel, we’re being affected by forex, but yet the price is coming down, why? Because we always work harder to insure that we reduce the cost of product. ”
Pantami refocused out that the Digital Economy Conference was rested on the need for the colorful West African countries to meet and communicate on how to boost the mainland’s areas using Information Communication Technology( ICT).
Still, it’s lower than our population growth, “ If you look at our frugality growth. There are situations where the population growth is advanced than the profitable growth.
“This by recrimination if care isn’t taken, the poverty will continue to increase within that population and in this environment within the Africa mainland.
“It’s because of this we feel it’s necessary to be visionary to organise West African mainland so that we can come together and see how we can congratulate each other.
“This is to make sure that our sub-region is specific and our mainland in general is veritably successful, he said.
