NITDA Seeks Collaboration With UNECA On ICT

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has called for the collaboration of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) on development of information technology in the country.

The Director General of the NITDA, Prof. Cleopas Angaye, made the call at the official stakeholders validation workshop recently in Abuja.

“ I wish to state categorically that this is the pilot phase and we seek the collaboration of UNECA and other major stakeholders in the ICT sector to proceed to a more detailed comprehensive and elaborate in the country wide survey thereafter.

“This effort will provide authentic data and information on ICT development and deployment.’’

Angaye said it was critical in planning and providing decision making process and that the Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) plan was the road map for IT development in the country.

He said the scan ICT Nigeria was a major follow-up which was aimed at measuring the impact of ICT on the socio- economic development in the country.

He also said it was an attempt to support Africa’s transition to an information society by building the capacity to collect the kind of information and data that supports and engineered ICT growth and investment.

According to him, Nigeria hopes to benefit more from the wealth of experience in the development of ICT across the African continent.

Angaye said the Scan ICT project comprised a broad-based national task force for Scan ICT and a major component of the methodology of achieving successful measurement of specific ICT indexes.

He said that it was relevant to the socio-economic development through the collaboration of the representatives of major sub-sectors in the ICT industry.

The DG said the Scan ICT activities had been coordinated in two phases by International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and UNECA.

He said that Nigeria was the first to carry out the scan ICT under the third phase of the project.

“This is I believe will go a long way for Nigeria’s inclusion in the trend and impact of ICT initiatives in Africa.’’

Our correspondent reports that the countries in which the project was conducted in Africa were Ghana, Morocco, Uganda, Ethiopia and Mozambique, among others.

Scan-ICT was a global initiative launched by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Government of Finland to make available quality data on ICT activities in Africa.

Angaye said the objective was to support the transition to an information society by building the capacity to collect and manage the kind of information and data that supports the development and collection of data, IT growth and investments.

The Representative of UNECA, Mr Makin Faye, in his speech, said his office in collaboration with NITDA would ensure that activities would be hastened up to speed up Nigeria entering the technology economy.

He said the UNECA was committed to the promotion of the Scan ICT development as they had been in the fore front of promoting the stakeholders networks in the country like the private sector.

He said the cooperation in the development of IT in Africa and Nigeria at large would continue to receive support from them.

He called on the concerned bodies to ensure that appropriate framework was put in place for faster development of ICT in the country.

He said the UNECA was pleased with the interest shown by the Nigerian government and the people in terms of ICT.