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Technology service provider MainOne was, over the weekend, commended for its unshaken commitments to ensuring Nigeria’s migration from natural resources economy to knowledge based economy. The commendation came from Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, who described the company as a partner to Nigeria’s march into the digital economy.
He urged other companies to consider setting up and sustaining data centres in Nigeria as government’s policies tilt increasingly to hosting data locally.
Pantami, particularly, commended MainOne for organising the tech Nerd event that brought together the tech community in Nigeria allowing service providers to discuss trends in the industry and fine-tune ways of improving the ecosystem.
He said that private sector needs to come together and key into the federal government readiness to ensure that Nigeria compete with other countries in the area of technology, especially Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI), to help create jobs in the country.
The minister, who was represented by Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, also stated that the federal government re-designated the Ministry of Communications to Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy to reflect the emerging trends where IT is taking over world’s economy.
Pantami noted that President Muhammadu Buhari received a report that indicates how ICT is becoming more lucrative than oil, therefore he recommended for re-designation that gave birth the ministry with a new mandate.
His words: “ICT has taken over oil and Nigeria has embraced this idea for economic diversification, however, in digital economy, data is the oil. The sector is now 2nd largest contributor to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“We have done so many things and we are still doing more in cloud policy strategy and data protection regulations. Our mission is we build a nation where digital innovation and entrepreneurship are used to create value and prosperity for all.”
Pantami added that the five biggest companies in the world namely; Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook are all cloud service providers
Speaking on Nigeria’s data operation, the minister explained that the federal government has about 90 percent of its data hosted in Nigeria, “more than 90 per cent of government data is hosted locally and we are hoping to achieve 100 per cent,” the Minister said.
He said hosting of national data outside Nigeria has security implications. He urged MainOne, investors and other private companies to champion data hosting business in Africa.
He said government is committed to providing the needed infrastructure to make the business of data hosting a successful one, noting that data centres have a critical role to play in achieving the mandate of the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy.
‘”MainOne has taken the big step of involving in cloud services and that is why we are partnering with them. We want to have more of MainOne in Nigeria so that cloud service would be made available and our data be hosted locally,” Pantami added.
Earlier, the Founder/CEO of MainOne, Ms. Funke Opeke, thanked Pantami for his sterling performance since his appointment as the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy.
Opeke said that she remains optimistic about MainOne services, and assures the minister of her total commitment towards achieving ‘Digital Nigeria.’
“Our company’s dream is to become a technology solution with highest customers in Nigeria, we remain hopeful on what we intend to achieve in the future.”
Opeke added that in the next five years, about 100 million Nigerians will be active online using different devices; hence the need to establish enormous data centres in the country.
