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The Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has asked Nigeria’s leading eCommerce companies to join hands with the federal government in its strategic implementation of the National Digital Economy Policy.
Abdullahi made the call while receiving Chairperson of Jumia Group, Ms Juliet Anammah in his office yesterday. He told Anammah it was time for the e-Commerce companies in Nigeria to come together and form a strong and viable entity that can work with government so as to achieve the dream of digitalising Nigeria’s business activities.
He said that there is high growing of Nigerians who do online businesses, especially Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), through numerous platforms, where potential buyers are connecting with sellers.
His words: “Many Nigerian engaged in e-commerce via Small and Medium Enterprise SME to sell their goods and services and that has tremendously increased the Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The NITDA’s boss further noted that the federal government was doing everything possible to provide adequate policies for “Ease of Doing Business” for private sectors and continue building capacity on digital literacy for consumers and online users.
Anammah, while thanking the agency’s for its role in setting agenda for the sector, said that Nigeria through Gross Merchandise valued at 838 million euro, has over 25% earnings, which makes the country the biggest market in Africa in e- commerce.
Jumia leads Nigeria’s eCommerce sector.
As part of the agency’s strategic mandate to improve use of digital tools in the country, Abdullahi stated that NITDA has launched ‘Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture’ (NAVSA), a digital platform that brings farmers together giving them room to market their farm produce on a digital space, and also connect them with potential investors.
He added that NITDA, on its part, is building Digital Academies across the country to ensure that Nigerians acquire prerequisite computer knowledge so that using devices will not be difficult for them. According to him, this cannot be achieved without necessary cooperation from the private sector.
“Despite being IT regulators, NITDA also needs cooperation from the private sector [players] that are into online business. Our door is always open. We run a collaborative government. We are working to make the environment conducive for private organisations to create jobs.
“It is very important for the eCommerce companies to come up with a strong, collective and concrete organisation that we can work together to make the industry better for everyone, particularly on job creation.”
Anammah stressed that e-commerce in Nigeria has, in the last few years created thousand jobs to unemployed youths, and become a multiplying factor for SME in the country. She said despite current challenges faced by the e-Commerce industry, Nigeria is still doing well in online businesses.
“There are some challenges especially poor roads connection, rails, digital infrastructures, digital identity and lack of digital literacy, but Nigeria still have the potentials to do better if there is a strong cross collaborations between the government and the private sectors,” she added.
