The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Nigerian Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has said the effective use and application of Information and Communications Technology can lead to job creation.
She said this while inspecting the modern ICT factory of Omatek Ventures Plc in Lagos on Friday.
According to her, ICT is critical to Nigeria’s quest to becoming one of the leading economies in the next seven years, as spelt out in the Vision 2020 agenda.
She said the world was increasingly becoming technology-driven, and ICTs remained a key driver of any economy, as it has the potential to address the rising unemployment trend in the country.
Quoting latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the minister said, “Each year, about 1.8 million young Nigerians enter our labour market and we need to ensure that our economy provides jobs for them and ICT is one of the sectors that can help in addressing this menace.”
The minister said the desire by the current administration to transform the economy using ICT informed the creation of the Ministry of Communication Technology in 2011, a development, she said, had been impacting positively on the economy through increased access to ICT tools and increase in the level electronic commerce activities.
She said, “Today, e-Commerce is making progress with the emergence of online megastores. ICT is driving electronic transactions, which has also brought a lot of efficiency and effectiveness in the financial services sector. This is the kind of effect we want to see through ICT. ICT is, indeed, transforming Nigeria’s economy.”
The minister also said as part of government’s measure to drive job creation, it had provided $15bn seed capital for the Ministry of Communication Technology to support innovation in ICT business for starts-ups, especially in the area of software development.
“In addition, we are also making N200bn guarantee fund available to Small and Medium Enterprises, SMEs, in all sectors, including ICT industry. The fund is a gender-friendly one, as 60 per cent of the fund is set aside for women in business,” she said, while also urging businesses in the ICT sector to leverage the fund.
On the Omatek factory, Okonjo-Iweala said she was impressed that in spite of the environment challenges in Nigeria, where infrastructure is a major problem to businesses and individuals, Omatek had been able to remain focused.
While assuring Omatek of government’s support, the minister urged the computer company to see quality as its yardsticks in its range of products, saying, “As a government, we would not only preach local patronage but also come in to buy the products en masse provided the quality is good and price is competitive. This is because we know that if supported, your business would help in technology transfer for Nigeria, create jobs and deepen knowledge economy.”
Earlier, while conducting the minister and her entourage including the top officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigerian Stock Exchange, Security and Exchange Commission, the Managing Director, Omatek, Ms. Florence Serki, lamented the poor patronage of locally-assembled ICT products, inadequate access to funds and lack of necessary incentives from the government.
“We want to appeal to the government to be serious in encouraging and enforcing local patronage policy. Before now, we had such good arrangement but it went off but we are still pushing for it to be revamped now,” she said.