As much as the call for development of local contents in Information and Communications Technology continues to reverberate, one obvious challenge has always been the issue of funding. Of course, there are many talented young Nigerians who are ready and willing to explore the technology world; who can move the country from being a technology consuming nation to technology producing nation but are being hampered lack of fund to execute their ideas.
It is against this backdrop that the recent gesture by the Office for ICT Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIIE), a subsidiary of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) is highly commendable. While it is not surprising though, given the mandate of NITDA as an agency saddled with the responsibility of developing ICTs in Nigeria, the extra efforts it put in empowering Start-ups with funding is one key panacea to many challenges of ICTs in Nigeria.
N50 Million Empowerment for start-ups
As a demonstration of the Federal Government’s commitment to strengthening indigenous ICT entrepreneurship to reduce joblessness and create wealth for the people, the OIIE under NITDA disbursed N50 million grants to tech-driven start-ups last year. According to Coordinator of OIIE Bunmi Okunowo, who disclosed this at another event aimed at empowering young entrepreneurs in ICT, StartUP Friday in Abuja, the office gave the grants to incubators and accelerators that have proven records of nurturing and producing start-ups with growth potential, adding that it is expecting the approval of its budget for this year before implementing this year’s disbursement.
As he rightly said: “One of the major challenges facing start-ups is the seed funding. That early stage funding that helps the start-ups to get the idea off ground to prototype, to working product and commercialisation stage. Seed funding is very scarce in our society, despite the increased rates of ICT products and services springing up every now and then. What we are doing is to assist thriving incubators and accelerators with grants in bankrolling the cost of incubating or accelerating promising tech-driven startups to successful businesses”.
ICT as alternative to oil
Interestingly, with the dwindling revenue accruable from the sale of crude oil and the nation’s desire to diversify the economy, the Federal Government has identified the promotion of local content in Information Communication Technology as another cash-cow the country could tap in to create jobs for unemployed Nigerians. According to the Minister of Communications, Barrister Adebayo Shittu, the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari places premium on diversification of the economy through the use of ICT, adding that “ICT is a genuine lap the government is looking at to grow other sectors of the economy.”
“You can’t afford to ignore ICT as driver of other sectors of the economy; reason why the government has put in measures and frameworks in place to support its growth. Local Content policy has been set out for the people to cue into. Every player in the sector must cue into this guideline to give us ample opportunity needed to create jobs.” “This administration realizes the importance of ICT’s contribution to Gross Domestic Product, (GDP). It contributed 8% to the GDP and the government believes that at the end of this administration, the figure must have increased to 30%, hence it efforts to leverage on the sector” the Minister had declared recently.
NITDA’s Empowerment Programmes
In line with this focus, NITDA as an agency of government has in the recent times raised the stake in its empowerment programmes through trainings and funding, which is helping in raising more and more ICT entrepreneurs in the country, thus creating more jobs. Before now, the agency had been delivering its mandates through human capacity development programmes such as scholarship scheme for graduates and undergraduates, Cisco Network Academy, Train-the-Trainer programme, Catch-Them-Young and Free and Open Source Software Training. Others are the Enterprise Technology Centre and Kado Resource Centre; Training of Unemployed Graduates in IT Essentials; ICT Youth Empowerment Scheme and Business Process Outsourcing. And several other programmes are being developed to get Nigerians fully engaged in ICTs.
At the Start-UP Friday, which hosted over 100 entrepreneurs, Okunowo said the programme was a component of its Start-UP Café designed to bridge the gap by enriching the development processes of new tech-driven businesses through “meet-up” which he said, would connect the tech-startup with investors, mentors, technology buyers and enthusiasts in major tech clusters in Lagos, Abuja, Kaduna and Enugu as well as Port-Harcourt, Ibadan and Ife. He said Start-UP Friday was a product of the feedback got from a study OIIE conducted in last year when it launched an online application for grants. The results of the poll revealed that Lagos State has the highest number of start-ups that applied, while Abuja and Kaduna came second and third respectively.
Before now, NITDA had embarked on empowerment for youths, by taking its development projects to the youth through a youth development programme tagged ICT Youth Empowerment Scheme, YES. The ICT youth sensitization programme is aimed at sensitizing Nigerian youths on ICT career opportunities as well as developing ICT human capital and entrepreneurship skill among youths. The programme has the objectives of exposing Nigerian youths to employment and economic opportunities in formal and informal jobs while catering for global and local demand; developing globally competitive youth population through human capital development in niche area of ICT; break barriers to human knowledge and socio-economic development; creating high potential for entrepreneurship; empowering best students during the training programme by providing them with tools to practice what they have been trained and supporting the growth of indigenous ICT industry to facilitate the production, and distribution of IT products, goods and services in all the sectors of the economy.
At the flag off of the training, both in Lagos and Abuja, there were over 200 participants shared equally between the two. And according to NITDA, its targets is to create about 3,700 jobs every year from the programme, even as it plans to replicate the training in the six geo-political zones of the country after the pilot phase.
NITDA had said the idea behind the training was to disabuse the mind of Nigerian youths that the only way to survive was to take up paid employment. According to the agency, in other climes, wealth is created by people who take their destiny in their own hands and those who move from conceptualisation to execution of their heart desires. The YES programme was to create that concept and as well as the platform to execute it.
Embracing Local Content
With those efforts in training and empowering Nigerians to become relevance in the ICT industry, it is not surprising that the agency, in line with the present administration’s focus, has heightened the campaign for local content embrace in the country. Harping on this recently, the acting Director General of NITDA, Dr. Vincent Olatunji, said the country has missed out on the long term economic reward and benefits of ICT because it failed to look inward to develop solutions to solve her socio economic challenges. “Accordingly, we desperately need to develop our own internal capacity and solutions based on the initiatives outlined in our local content policy an guidelines.”
He stated that compliance to the Local Content Guidelines is vital in achieving the mandate of economic diversification and empowerment of the ICT ecosystem in the country, noting that the workshop would provide enlightenment to Heads of ICT, Planning and Procurement on the local content guidelines.
Dr. Olatunji said that henceforth any MDA that defaulted in patronizing local content in ICT would be committing a crime. “NITDA will no longer tolerate any breach of this regulation and will ensure breaches no longer go unpunished.” He said that NITDA, through the Ministry of Communications, would send a memo to the Federal Executive Council to re-validate government’s directive on patronage of made in Nigeria ICT products and services.
Of course, by virtue of her population, Nigeria has the human capital to become the technology power house in Africa, if not the world. The challenge has always been the lack of right knowledge and skills as well as funding, which incidentally are being addressed by NITDA through its various empowerment programmes. With the strong political will and the efforts of an agency like NITDA, Nigeria may have been on the right track to achieving the lofty goal. However, sustainability and consistency of the programmes will be key to achieving the desired end for the country.