Yemisi Izuora
The Minister of Communications, Dr. Adebayo Shittu has appealed to HUAWEI Technologies to consider investing in the Nigeria ICT park, empower the youths with ICT knowledge and skills as well as help in the innovative and affordable solutions and connect more unconnected people in rural areas.
Shittu, made the statement during a meeting with the Chairman, Supervisory Board, HUAWEI Technologies, Mr. Jason Li in Lagos.
The Minister urged HUAWEI to explore cooperation in strategic ICT Plan, National Broadband Plan, ICT Development Bank; National ICT Park and National Smart Cities Initiatives.
According to him, “Nigeria is willing to implement cooperation deals reach with Huawei, strengthen cooperation in areas such as ICT and human capital development. I would like to first express my sincere gratitude to Huawei Technologies for their commitment to promote ICT ecosystem development in Nigeria”.
He said “My presence here is further demonstration of my commitment and strong belief in Huawei Technologies to assist Nigeria Government in leveraging ICT to drive transparency in governance and improve the quality of cost effectiveness of public service delivery in Nigeria as well as competitiveness”.
Dr. Shittu noted that ICT has emerged as one of the key performers of Nigeria’s economy by contributing around 10% to the country’s GDP, with 79% mobile penetration and 33% broadband penetration.
The Minister pointed out that his Ministry is collaborating with Huawei in the ICT Strategy Plan, (National ICT plan:2016-2020), National Backbone which connects all the states across Nigeria. (NITIB I & II Project), Provision of more connectivity to rural areas. (NRTP II Project), and Human and Institutional capacity development as well as training of more than 20,000 Nigerians in ICT engineers.
Earlier, the Chairman, Supervisory Board, HUAWEI Technologies, Mr. Jason Li stated that he was in Nigeria to do oversight function on HUAWEI Technologies staff on how they complied with regulations in Nigeria and cooperation with the local ecosystems.
He said the organization has strong commitment to make HUAWEI local in Nigeria by hiring more Nigerians and making local investment that would contribute to the society as well as focusing on digital transformation of individuals and enterprises.
In his words, “only HUAWEI can create true value to customers, local operators and Nigeria government and we will try our best to cooperate with government and customers”.