Create ICT Parks For Digitisation, MTN Urges States

Chief executive officer of MTN Nigeria Mr Karl Toriola has challenged Nigerian subnational governments to create clusters of ICT parks for the acquisition of digital skills and attraction of digital investment into their domains. He said digitisation is the only thing that would increase the productivity of the nation and any state that elects to take part of success.

“Developing data skills, creating an attractive investment environment for digital skills and digital investment into states, things like business process outsourcing are going to be a significant leaver to develop states and national economy,” Toriola said at the 29th Nigerian Economic Summit themed “Pathways for Sustainable Economic Transformation and Inclusion,” who he spoke as a panellist on the topic ‘Collaboration for Sustainable Economic Development’.

Toriola there are a whole lot of opportunities that can be tapped into in the telecom industry. “For us, we think there are massive opportunities and we are just waiting for the states that are going to lead in this area. And they will attract a disproportionate amount of investment from our industry.”

“I am waiting for the first state to create an ICT park. I am talking about a complete living environment where you allow limitless fibres to be deployed to those kinds of locations where you allow the leading technology into those kinds of locations, of course with the power infrastructure to attract investment, attract data centre, attract developers, and attract all kinds of data development and particularly data skills development into that state,”

He said if there is no consistency of government policies across the next administration, players in the corporate world will not have the predictability to invest significantly in long-term businesses in those kinds of locations.

On a regional basis, he said certain states based on the number of natural resources they have, can also create clusters of investment and work in partnerships around agriculture, mining which gives an enabling environment and confidence to investors to come and invest in Border States for easy movement of goods and services.

He said having consistency of policy and very strong institution building for things like investment promotion companies and other mining commissions or ministries in such domains of economic activities would give a lot of confidence to foreign investors.

He also expressed multiple challenges facing the industry. 

Toriola pointed to policy summersault at the federal level and the sub-nationals, high inflation, currency devaluation, many multiple taxation layers and the constantly increasing large share of its revenue that goes to the government year-on-year as some of the challenges facing MTN Nigeria and other players in the industry. He said MTN Nigeria has had to embark on continuous investments of between $5 and $7 million every year to keep the networks going.  “That’s a challenge,” he said.

He however praised the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for ensuring clarity of policy and good institution-building, which he said has made business operations a lot easier.

Mr Toriola said the institution of the NCC was built by building the first set of rules and holding the institution accountable to those rules, with a cadre of staff that has solid competencies. “And that’s what allowed the industry to thrive over the years and made it a very attractive destination for investment. That makes it very simple,” he stated.