Tuesday 30 August 2011

New Ministry of Communication Technology will Drive Four Key Mandates - By Omobola Johnson


By Omobola Johnson
Minister of Communications Technology

THE MINISTRY of Communication Technology is a new Ministry and as with all things new awareness building, information dissemination, opinion forming are critical. As such the media will play a critical role in the success of this Ministry.
This Ministry was birthed out of years of canvassing by key stakeholders for a supervising Ministry to co-ordinate, facilitate and drive the development of the ICT sector.
President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has responded to this call because he is acutely aware of the strategic and important role that ICT plays not only in national development but in national competitiveness and of course the creation of much needed jobs especially for our younger generation.
As you all know Nigeria has had tremendous success in the telecoms sector as a result of the liberalization of the sector. Today we have one of the fastest growing telecoms markets in the world as well as the largest mobile subscriber base in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Unfortunately the IT sector for a variety of reasons has not been as successful.  In fact despite the success of our telecoms industry the ICT sector accounted for only 3.5% of GDP, compared with 10% for South Africa.
The opportunity for us as a country now comes in how to take our telecoms sector to the next level – data, the internet and e-business and how to build a more robust and successful IT industry.  This is the charge from Mr. President to the Ministry of Communication Technology.  The mandate of the Ministry includes:
-        Facilitating universal, ubiquitous and cost effective access to communications infrastructure that of course includes a national fibre optic backbone
-        Promote the utilization of ICT in all spheres of life to optimize the communications infrastructure – digital content, domestic software applications, the delivery of private and public services i.e. e-business and e-government
-        Promote and facilitate the development of the ICT industry and in so doing Increase the contribution of the ICT industry to GDP
-        Deploy information and communication technologies to drive transparency in governance and improve the quality and cost effectiveness of public service delivery.
Our aspirations for what ICT can do for Nigeria are ambitious – we believe that policies, programmes and plans that will be embarked upon to deliver on this mandate will  provide a launch pad for Nigeria to leap-frog from a resource- dependent to a knowledge-based economy.
Nigeria can be transformed into a major ICT hub where knowledge, technology and innovation are used as tools to not only drive wealth creation and empower citizens of the country, but also deployed to provide security, promote efficiency and national competitiveness for sustainable socio-economic development.
This new Ministry will of course work very closely with the private sector n Nigeria, international partners and other supporting governments through its implementing agencies. Implementing Agencies are the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Nigerian Communications Satellite NIGCOMSAT, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Galaxy Backbone and the Nigerian Postal service (NIPOST).
As time goes on we will be revealing our plans and strategies for execution and I hope that we can continue to work together on what I am convinced will be an exciting and eventful journey of transformation using ICT.

* Text of address by Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson at an interactive meeting with ICT Editors held in Lagos on Friday 26th August 2011.

No comments:

Post a Comment