Galaxy Backbone Piloting Nigeria’s Role In Africa’s Single Digital Market

Nigeria’s leading role in the digital economy sector reverberates around Africa as the continent strengthens its capacity for a single digital market within the framework Smart Africa Alliance.

Nigeria’s Galaxy Backbone (GBB) PLC  has been at the forefront of this ambitious move for digital transformation of Nigeria  and Africa since it was established in 2006 by the Federal Government to pursue a coordinated and harmonized approach to information and communications technology acquisition, operation and use in the public sector.

GBB has been one of the major arteries of Nigeria’s digital sector and it has been a reference point where other African countries visit as the repository of digital skills, high-tech information, sophisticated facilities and the hub of expertise on digital innovation.

Recently, a delegation of digital experts from Zambia visited the facilities of the GBB in Abuja and was fascinated by the prowess of the GBB in policy initiatives and the drive to transform the continent into a single digital market.

Welcoming the delegation the Managing Director/CEO of the agency, Prof. Muhammed Abubakar, highlighted the enormous efforts being made by GBB and sister agencies to implement Nigeria‘s National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy(NDEPS 2020-2030) and many other policies that have been developed  to guide the digital transformation of Africa.

He said “I believe  you are very much aware of the efforts that are being put in  place before now in terms of policies  for NDEPS 2020-2030 and you are also aware of  many other policies that have been  developed that will guide  the digital transformation of Nigeria as it were and by that the digital transformation of Africa.”

Nigeria is reputed as the digital hub of Africa especially  on Information and Communications Technology (ICT), which has contributed immensely to the GDP of the country, making  it the investment  hub of the continent.

According to the GBB boss, “Nigeria is the leading economy in Africa and in terms of digitalisation it is also a leading country in the whole of Africa, and out of seven Unicorns that we have in Africa five of them had their roots in Nigeria. This is enough to tell you the direction that we are going and we have the talent and what needs to be done so that we keep Africa together while we also lead it to the Promised Land in the 4th Industrial Revolution.

“So, one of the efforts to boost this policy is that Nigeria keyed into what we called the Smart Africa Alliance – the Smart Africa Alliance is a body that is headquartered in Rwanda and the chairman is the President of Rwanda. The whole essence is to see that we are not left behind in Africa and be able to key into the 4th industrial revolution that is knowledge -based.

“One of the things we are doing now in consonance with what Smart Africa Alliance wants to achieve is to have a single digital market for the whole of Africa and that is going to be our flagship in Nigeria. We want to harmonise all African countries into a single digital market in such a way we don’t have to depend on other continents. We have gone far on that and I think another thing is that we hope to be in Rwanda somewhere next month to further consolidate on that.”

Speaking to journalists after a tour of the facilities at the Galaxy backbone,  the Director of Zambia’s Information and Communications Technology Authority, Austin Sichinga, said his country was attracted to Nigeria’s digital economy especially the ICT infrastructure because of the massive investment Nigeria has made in the sector, which has added value to the nation’s economy.

He said “we are also on a digital journey; our country is making efforts towards digitalising the economy and increasing utilisation of ICT. In our journey we looked at aspects of securing our transactions, we have looked at various countries that we could learn from. We came to agree that Nigeria is probably one of the best destinations we can look at not just because of similarity but also on how they manage a big population but still managing to make some strides on implementing secure digital transactions.”

The Zambian expert said further that his country has a population of over 18 million which is fairly small compared to Nigeria, adding that his team came to observe how to manage infrastructure deployment of wire services over large physical space   with massive infrastructure deployment just like Nigeria  is doing.

He craved for more collaboration with Nigeria  on  digital skill development through legal and policy framework to  ensure that the Zambian  citizenry is well-equipped with  the right knowledge to utilise digital services.

“We have made quite a significant stride as well starting from the policy framework. We have the National ICT Policy, we have the legislative framework, and we have the electronic communication transactions act of 2011, the cybercrime act 2021 and data protection act 2021. We also have a data centre may be not of a similar size  with Nigeria.

“We  have a national data centre as well  and we are deploying government services and we have  set up  a government portal, where citizens can access various government services and make payments for transactions online.”

On the Smart Africa Alliance, Mr. Sichinga said “we are part of the Smart Africa Alliance. In that alliance each country is trying to spearhead what are called flagship projects, one of the areas that our presidency has mentioned is a nonstop border. So, that calls for a lot of collaboration because borders   have to do with exchange of data. Therefore institutions have to begin to collaborate not just within countries but across countries, because if you want to trade and you want to move your goods from Nigeria to Zambia the data will be clear to reduce complications and make it easy for movement of goods and people.”