I.C.T Professionals Seek Policies To Subsidize Digital Connectivity

To ensure even distribution of digital connectivity across the country, experts on Information Communications Technology (ICT) have called on the government to come up with policies to subsidize rural connectivity to ensure full participation in the digital space.
They argued that, Nigeria, though still at the level of infancy in the global space, its capabilities, developments and technological infrastructures are not uniformly distributed in some parts of the country.

According to them, every Nigerian is entitled to participate in the digital space, and not needed to be bound by geographical location.They spoke during a program tagged ‘Digitizing Nigeria’, organized by the ICT-Driven Knowledge Park of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife (OAK Park) in conjunction with Academy Halogen.

The Chair of FASMICRO Group, USA, Prof. Ndubuisi Ekekwe, noted that with the country’s slow steps to automation, there is a need for the country to invest heavily in digitization and build the necessary infrastructure in order to be at par with other digitized economies.

According to him, government needs to increase its effort as it is only the private sector that is taking it upon itself to build capabilities in Nigeria to be a digitized nation.

Similarly, the Vice Chancellor of OAU, Prof. Eyitope Ogunbodede, who explained the role of the academia in digitizing Nigeria, stressed that the academia also needs to partner with the industry and community to move the development agenda of the Federal Government through their contributions to ease the process of digitizing the economy.

On steps taken to digitalis the country effectively, he said: “there are needs for government subsidies the cost of digitization, sensitize the populace to let them know the importance while the academia would also look for a way to make it economical for the public for easy availability and deployment.”The Chief Operating Officer of Academy Halogen, Dr. Wale Adeagbo, who noted that digitalization increases the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) substantially, mentioned exposure of data to hackers as part of the challenges of digitization.

He said the academy partnered OAU to further equip and work with competencies specialists that can work both with the private and public sectors to protect systems and their organizations against cyber attack. The aim of the event, he added, was to throw up more awareness to the public against cyber security.