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“Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is critical to driving Nigeria’s digital economy, Director General of the National Information Technology Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi has stated today at an Online Stakeholder Engagement Workshop on the Draft National Outsourcing Strategy for Nigeria 2020-2025.
Abdullahi said with the COVID 19 pandemic and the strong shift to digital and no- physical implementation of business processes, it has become strategic to the agency to aggressively implement the Nigeria’s National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy Plan, which the Nigerian government under president Muhammadu Buhari is fully committed to.
“Business Process Outsourcing is one of the emerging services we can provide digitally. In 2019, according to Grand View Research, the global business process outsourcing market size was valued at $221.5 billion USD and was expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.0% from 2020 to 2027,” Abdullahi told an audience of stakeholders drawn from the public and private sectors including the media.
He said the coronavirus was forcing organisations to cut bottom-line cost, leverage technology that helps to reduce operational cost and naturally, outsourcing with its inherent benefits, is a strong option for many organisations.
He said: They will leverage the benefits of outsourcing so as to focus on core competencies”
Adding: “Business Process Outsourcing offers services such as administration, supply chain management, sales, paralegal, marketing, and customer care services. Players in the business process outsourcing compete in providing reliable and cost-effective services across industries and sectors such as government, healthcare, manufacturing, IT and telecommunications.”
The creation and promotion of a critical mass of digital services is one of the 8-pillars on which Nigeria’s National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy Plan is fostered. In line with its mandate, he said the NITDA is committed to facilitating the digital transformation of Nigeria’s economy.
His words: “With the recent government initiative to make Nigeria a leading digital economy coupled with the government promise to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty, NITDA under the supervision of Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy has refocused its effort to the implementation of the National Digital Economy Strategy. This resonates with what is happening globally. Digital economy was emerging before COVID-19 and now the crisis has made it more profound.”
Quoting the Forbes magazine, NITDA’s boss added: “the world’s 25 richest billionaires have gained nearly $255 billion USD in just two months. Almost all of them leverage the power of the digital platform to get the whopping amount.
“Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the biggest gainer. He made almost 32.5Billion USD in two months under lockdown and he has moved from the 7th richest person in the world in early April to the fourth-richest person today.”
He told the audience that the agency was enabling a steady digitization of public services in a way that will make the country’s economy to be knowledge-based and help create more than one million jobs for Nigerian youths.
“The strategy aims to foster an enabling institutional, legal, regulatory, technological and infrastructural environment for sustainable development and rapid growth of IT-enabled outsourcing industry in Nigeria. We are targeting creating over a million jobs in Nigeria by 2025.”
