The Director General, NITDA, Dr. Isa Ibrahim has called on the potential international investors to consider the enormous potentials of the Nigerian economy and take advantage of investment opportunities.
Speaking at the Africa Investment Forum at the ongoing GITEX WEEK in Dubai, he said the business environment is favorable, and Nigeria is blessed with abundant and varied types of natural resources, many of which serve as raw materials for the production of devices.
“By having an investment presence in Nigeria, investors will have a reduced need to import raw materials from Europe, Asia, and the Americas. By refining those raw materials, we can also jointly generate significant revenue by exporting them to other countries.
The DG said NITDA is working hard to ensuring the ICT is considered as the foremost of growing Africa’s biggest economies, as well as ensuring that broadband is expanded in the country.
In his paper presentation, a paper titled “The Nigerian ICT Sector: A Haven For Investors,” Dr. Ibrahim noted that Nigeria’s size of our population offers investors an enormous market for products and services with a potential High Return on Investment within a short period.
“This is all the more interesting when one considers the fact that investors will also have access to a large pool of highly skilled labor at a considerably more competitive labor cost than competing markets.
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“We have experienced some degree of success in our participation at GITEX. For example, 2 of the start-ups we sponsored for GITEX 2015 forged partnerships with a Malaysian company at the event. Two others are being incubated by a Nigerian ICT firm and one Nigerian company that participated at GITEX 2015 formed a partnership with a German company to develop the software to drive their hardware.
The product of this Nigeria-German partnership is being showcased at this year’s event. It is our desire that we significantly scale up such businesses and investments as a result of our participation at GITEX 2016”, he added.
He added that the current administration recently formed a Presidential Commission to significantly improve our Ease of Doing Business rank, noting that efforts are also underway in the Nigerian Senate to review the tax laws to aid the presidential effort to make Nigeria investor-friendly.
“At NITDA we have created a special office known as the Office for ICT Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIIE) to spearhead ICT’s contribution to our GDP through “techpreneurs” and ICT start-ups.
You may also recall that Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, was in Nigeria two months ago to attend the Aso Villa Demo Day, an initiative by the Nigerian Presidency to identify and promote 30 start-ups with the brightest home-grown innovative solutions. Mr Zuckerberg admitted that he was “blown away” by the talent of young Nigerians. Many of his social media comments after the event have reflected this. We invite you, our potential investors, to take advantage of this massive talent as you invest in Nigeria”.
In his views, Barrister Adebayo Shittu, Minister of Communications in his speech emphasized the importance of the size of the Nigerian Market and why Investors should consider her as the number choice of investment in Africa.
“The ICT Ministry is willing to partner and work with them to ensure a win-win situation for all parties,” the Minister said.
