NCC Urges Systematic Collaboration To Address African Telecoms Regulatory Challenges

The Nigerian Communications Commissions (NCC) has admonished member states of the African Telecommunications Union (ATU) to develop a more systematic mechanism for telecommunications regulators to address the challenges facing the sector.

The Executive Vice Chairman/CEO of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Aminu Maida, made this call on Tuesday in Abuja while making his remarks at the African Heads of Regulators Roundtable, as part of the ATU conference of plenipotentiaries in Abuja with the theme, “Building Africa’s Network Intelligence Ecosystem for Evidence-Based Regulation.”

The NCC boss noted that although regulators operate in markets of different sizes with different legal frameworks, the core realities of their work are remarkably similar.

“The conversation between regulators rarely remains a casual conversation for very long.

“Five minutes later, we are discussing investment, infrastructure resilience, satellite services, cyber security, affordability, artificial intelligence, or the latest technology that has arrived just in time to test the regulatory framework we thought had finally settled,” he said.

He noted that the value of the Roundtable is within the context of transforming informal peer exchanges into structured learning that will boost regulatory practices within the region.

“Very often, the challenge that one regulator is trying to solve has already been encountered in one form or another by a colleague elsewhere on the continent.

“So the question really is: how do we make that exchange of experience more deliberate, more systematic, and more useful to our institutions?” he asked.

He described the theme of the Roundtable as “timely and relevant,” adding  that it provides an opportunity to explore how data, evidence, and market intelligence can strengthen regulatory decisions and improve learning across African regulators.

Dr. Maida said further that the greater goal is to stimulate “an open and practical conversation” on what has worked, what has not, and where collaboration can prevent regulators from “solving the same problems repeatedly in isolation.”

Executive Commissioner, Stakeholder Management at the NCC Mrs. Rimini Makama, in her remarks tasked African regulators on the need to move beyond data collection and focus on turning information into smarter, more transparent, and consumer-focused decisions.

Makama noted that the communications sector has greatly transformed, adding that “Broadband is expanding, satellite services are arriving, and Artificial Intelligence, cloud computing, and digital public infrastructure are reshaping our sector. The old regulatory approaches were built for a simpler time. They are no longer enough.”

She stressed that to “stay ahead of the problems and not just react to them, we need trusted intelligence.”

She revealed that NCC’s regulatory intelligence ecosystem platform integrates Quality of Service and Quality of Experience data, consumer complaints, compliance analytics, and market intelligence into one place to ensure decisions are evidence-based.

In an interview with reporters Makama called for the creation of a continental platform to enable African regulators to share regulatory data, insights, and challenges for more cohesive decision-making.

She said that NCC is embedding more transparency in its regulatory process by using data to drive decisions “for the benefit of the consumer.”

“Today we just had a panel about using data to drive regulatory decisions. The NCC is enshrining more transparency around using data to help with a lot of the decisions that we are making,” she stated.

She said Roundtable was apt as it brought together regulators from across Africa to share insights, share challenges, and learn from one another.

“The whole essence of this panel is: we gathered regulators from across Africa here to share insights, share challenges, and also learn from them,” she said.

 Adi Timothy Ashong, Director General, Regional African Satellite Communications Organisation (RASCOM), told reporters in an interview that there is the need for regional stakeholders to increase investment in both terrestrial and satellite infrastructure to achieve seamless connectivity across Africa, especially in border and hard-to-reach areas.