In what appears a fresh perspective to marketing the nation’s vibrant telecom sector, the Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Professor Umar Danbatta, said Nigerian would be attending this year’s ITU Telecom World forum holding in Bangkok, Thailand with a strong credential: a crop of young innovators and smart start-ups in addition to an equally strong public and private sector contingent.
Nigeria has a rich mix of young and highly talented innovators which attracted super innovator mark Zuckerberg to the country recently. Danbatta said the country would flaunt some of our talented innovators at this year’s ITU Telecom World.
He noted that Nigeria telecom has been growing placing foreign direct investment in the sector since the dawn of the GSM revolution in 2001 at $35 billion.
The purpose, he said, is to showcase Nigeria’s telecoms market reputed to be one of the fastest growing markets in the world. ITU Telecom World is the flagship annual telecom feast of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) which brings global players in the sector including original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), operators, equipment vendors, investors, consumers and enthusiasts under one roof.
This year’s edition holds in November in Bangkok and Nigeria for the first time hosted a pre-ITU Telecom World during which The EVC set the agenda for Nigeria at the ITU world 2016. He said that the commission is looking at attracting more meaningful investments into the country especially in the areas of broadband and innovation since going by the country’s level of penetration “we’re just a developing broadband market at 14%”.
As the nation seeks to stake a claim in the broadband ecosystem at the ITU, the EVC emphasized that innovation is an important aspect of the nation’s broadband ecosystem.
The forum, he said, was to chart a new part, interact and collaborate with a view to creating a template that will form our narrative at the International Telecommunications Union, ITU Telecom World 2016.
This has become imperative as a new digital divide is rearing its head in the global information society and knowledge economy. Danbatta added that with this therefore, there’s the need for more investments and partnership to make us overcome the new digital divide.
The country’s showing at the ITU, he continued, will be to showcase what she has in the ICT space in order to attract investors. And one of such showing is in the crop of young Nigerian innovators who will be part of Nigeria delegation to the ITU conference in November. The Nigerian delegation to the ITU however adopted the theme ‘Smart communities : key to digital Nigeria’, where the country will host an investment forum to attract investors.
