COUNTRY FOCUS: NIGERIA
“With more than
90 million mobile
data subscribers
and expanding
broadband users,
Nigeria is the single
largest Internet
market in Africa by
volume.”
Nigeria’s nascent IT sector, research and
policy standardisation, and coordination
of the government’s IT-related
development programmes.
With more than 90 million mobile data
subscribers and a rapidly expanding
number of fixed broadband users,
Nigeria is the single largest Internet
market in Africa by volume. Data
provided by the four mobile operators
shows continued growth in terms of
both total mobile subscribers and
mobile data users. According to the
World Bank-ITU data, as of July 2016
Internet penetration in Nigeria had
reached 46.1%, up from 45.1% at the
end of 2015 and just 5.5% in 2006.
Nigeria is one of the most connected
countries in Africa in regard to
international bandwidth. Five
submarine fibre-optic cables come
ashore in the country, delivering total
capacity in excess of 17 Tbps. The
nation’s oldest subsea fibre link to the
global Internet backbone is the South
Atlantic 3-West Africa Submarine
Cable, which was completed in 2001
and stretches from Portugal to South
Africa, where it meets up with another
cable that, in turn, runs on to Malaysia
via India.
Despite Nigeria’s relatively high level
of international connectivity, the
limited state of the nation’s domestic
fibre-optic infrastructure network
means that broadband penetration
has remained low. In the ITU’s 2015
38
INTELLIGENTCIO
ICT Development Index, which
ranks countries by digital technology
penetration, Nigeria ranked 134th
out of 167 countries in total. While
international Internet bandwidth per
Internet user in Nigeria was at 3150
bps in 2014, up from 2348 bps in 2010,
according to the ITU, by most estimates
only around 10-15% of the nation’s
incoming submarine cable capacity is
currently being put to use.
As in many other ICT markets around
the world, Nigerian technology end
users have migrated away from PCs in
favour of smartphones and tablets. The
majority of the hardware in use in the
country is imported, while a steadily
expanding domestic ICT hardware
industry has gained traction primarily
with public sector organisations,
education institutions and the lower
end of the retail market. Local computer
producers like Inlaks Computers and
Brian Integrated Systems assemble
PCs from low-cost imported parts. In
recent years these firms have begun to
look into building their own tablets and
smartphones as well, in order to keep up
with the market.
future of Nigeria’s technology industry.
The rapid uptake of mobile data
subscriptions over the past few years, plus
steadily rising number of smartphone
handsets in circulation indicate unmet
demand for digital products and services.
The nation’s small but rapidly
expanding indigenous ICT segment
has developed a range of services
tailored to the specific needs of this
new domestic market, including digital
streaming platforms that host large
amounts of African content and online
“Nigeria is one
of the most
connected
countries in
Africa in regard
to international
bandwidth.”
From middle of 2016, 30% of
Nigerian mobile subscribers owned
a smartphone. A number of firms
have worked to develop a low-cost
smartphone to launch in Nigeria, where
Apple and Samsung products are too
expensive for the local population.
The local manufacturer Solo, which
was launched in 2013 by a Nigerian
entrepreneur, sells a number of sub-
$200 models, which have proven
popular in the local market. A variety
of major Chinese manufacturers
like Transsion and Huawei have also
introduced low-cost handsets in Nigeria
in recent years. marketplaces that sell locally made
products. Supporting ICT innovation
and entrepreneurship has become a
central component of the government’s
technology development strategy in
recent years to improve the country’s
productiveness and efficiency.
Despite facing many challenges, most
local players are optimistic about the Excerpted from Growing ICT uptake in
Nigeria by Oxford Business Group. n
Nigeria’s market for ICT products and
services, will likely drive technology
sector development and the broader
economy in the years to come. The
Nigerian government has shown an
active interest in increasing the role ICT
plays in the economy and supporting
efforts to raise its contribution to GDP.
“The government’s primary technology
oversight body is the National IT
Development Agency, which was
formally established in 2001.”
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