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Nigeria has been one of Africa’s biggest success stories
in its expansion of telecommunications and information
and communication technologies (ICT) — this
was what ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun I. Touré
emphasized during his visit there in September 2009,
while attending the African Telecom Development
Summit, held in the nation’s capital, Abuja.
From a subscriber base of less than half a million
in 2000, Nigeria now has a total of over 73 million
mobile and fixed connections, which is a teledensity
of about 50 per cent. Investment in telecommunications
has shot up to about USD 18 billion. Operators
are gaining generous returns, making the country
an attractive environment for further investment. In
addition, Nigeria added 11 million new Internet users
between 2000 and 2008 — representing close
to 40 per cent of the total additions in sub-Saharan
Africa during that period.
Providing all the essential factors
In addressing the summit, Dr Touré noted that
today, Nigeria has one-quarter of Africa’s phone
subscribers. “You need to have all the conditions together
for the telecommunication sector to thrive: a
vibrant private sector, the technology, and a government
that will take the right policy decisions. In addition,
you need a referee in the game, which is the
regulator”. Nigeria, the Secretary-General said, has
met all those conditions.
Nigeria’s auction of spectrum for mobile communications
in 2001 was acclaimed as transparent
and highly successful. In 2003, the Nigerian
Communications Act established a Universal Service
Provision Fund. Its objective is to subsidize service
provision in areas (especially the rural and underserved
parts of the country) where ordinary service
providers would not do business.
The country has also benefited from the reforms
conducted by the Nigerian Communications
Commission (NCC). It has set up structures and institutions
to help people gain knowledge and skills in
ICT, thus laying an important foundation for growth.
NCC programmes boost ICT in Nigeria
The Digital Appreciation Programme (DAP) is
aimed at encouraging the use of ICT in primary,
secondary and tertiary educational institutions.
NCC, by deploying some of the Universal Service
Provision Fund, has been able to contribute
computers to a number of schools across the
country, as well as very small aperture terminals
(VSAT) for Internet access.
The Advanced Digital Appreciation Programme
(ADAPT) focuses on teachers (mostly in tertiary
institutions), who must be computer literate
to gain the benefits of ICT and pass on their
knowledge to students. Through this programme,
NCC has trained thousands of teachers across the
country and has supplied some with computers.
The Digital Bridge Institute (DBI) was established
to help overcome the shortage of skilled
personnel that resulted from the boom in the
mobile communications industry. Staffed by
experts from different parts of the world, DBI has
three campuses, in Abuja, Lagos and Kano.
The right environment
It is perhaps the regulatory framework that
has contributed most to the remarkable growth in
Nigeria’s telecommunication industry by making it
easier for companies to gain licences and enter the
market. This success indicates what could be achieved
in development generally. Speaking at the summit in
Abuja, Minister of National Planning Shamsudeen
Usman said: “I often use the development of the telecom
companies in Nigeria to highlight the possibility of change in Nigeria”. He added that progress “has
so far been achievable by the government creating
an enabling environment, establishing good regulations,
and encouraging the private sector to invest
properly in telecommunications”.
Promoting broadband
NCC is also looking at ways of making the
Internet accessible across the country. As well as a
planned licensing of the 2.3 GHz band for broadband
services, it is encouraging several licensees to push
forward with ambitious projects. Phase3 Telecom
and Suburban Telecom are taking fibre-optic cables
into West Africa, while the Glo-1 submarine cable
from Europe landed in Nigeria in September 2009
and the Main One Cable, also from Europe, landed
in October.
In addition, NCC is strongly promoting a project
to roll out broadband services to all parts of the country
— and beyond — at an achievable cost. Called
“Fibre Without Borders”, the project encourages the
creation of cross-border fibre-optic links to build a
platform across Africa. One result will be that African
countries will not have to route calls through Europe
in order to talk to their neighbours.
Digital broadcasting ahead of schedule
The deadline for moving from analogue to digital
broadcasting in Africa was set by ITU as June 2015.
In Nigeria, though, the target date has been brought
forward to June 2012 and great efforts to meet it are
being made by broadcasting companies.
While in Abuja, Dr Touré visited African
Independent Television (AIT), which is operated on
the platform of Daar Communications Plc. After
appearing on one of its flagship programmes, he
toured the company’s facilities and saw trucks that broadcast high-definition television, complementing
the heavy studio investments by Daar. The firm is already
digitally compliant, far ahead of the country’s
switchover date. Commencing business in 1993 in an
industry deregulated a year earlier, Daar has a chain
of radio and television stations across Nigeria, and by
mid-2008 had added a digital satellite television service
that offers subscribers more than 40 channels.
Daar was the broadcaster for the football world
championship for players up to 17 years of age,
FIFA U-17, staged in Nigeria from 24 October to
15 November 2009. AIT worked with the service provider,
Host Broadcast Services, to produce and send
clean feeds to the rest of the world. The Fédération
Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has very
strict specifications for equipment to cover its tournaments,
because audiences anywhere in the world
must be able to watch the events. A Nigerian broadcaster’s
ability to meet such rules has been hailed as
a landmark achievement. South Africa, too, is using
its hosting of a football tournament — the 2010 FIFA
World Cup — to benchmark its digital switchover.
Nigeria runs one of the most liberalized broadcasting
sectors in Africa. Led by the National Broadcasting
Commission, in 2008 the industry started a phased
transition to digital broadcasting by cable and satellite
television broadcasters. Dr Touré noted that this
can result in less use of energy resources, and thus a relatively quick return on investment. However,
the change cannot take place without new equipment
being available, and the costs of this remain a
burning issue in the developing world. The Nigerian
government has promised to look into ways of possibly
subsidizing costs for less wealthy citizens, so that
everyone can have access to the new broadcasting
system.
Extraordinary growth
Dr Touré said at the summit that “it has been an
extraordinary decade for Africa. Just ten years ago,
virtually nobody in Africa had a mobile phone; today
mobile cellular subscription teledensity has reached
32.6 per cent, and more than 30 million people in
sub-Saharan Africa can access the Internet.” Nigeria’s
developments are a shining example of what can
be achieved, and what should be the goals for the
future.
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