National Digital Innovation, Entrepreneurship Policy Will Transform Nigeria -FG
The Federal Government has said it’s developing a National Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship Policy that would eradicate all forms of barriers that are militating against local innovations.
Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami stated this yesterday in Abuja, during a one day stakeholders’ workshop on the review of the Draft National Digital Innovative and Entrepreneurship.
Speaking at the workshop, Pantami said that, local innovations and entrepreneurship are key to national growth.
“If we give our local innovations the necessary support; they will lift Nigeria from a consuming nation to a producing nation,” he added.
Speaking further he said, the government plans to remove all forms of barriers that are regarding the growth of indegineous innovations in the country.
“the policy is to remove all barriers working against idegineous innovations,” he said.
Earlier, in his welcome address, the Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Inuwa Abdullahi said, the introduction of the policy was apt considering the fact the country is passing through crisis.
“We are passing through a time of unprecedented crisis. A quadruple crisis started with health crisis, which led to the economic crisis that led to the humanitarian crisis and the mental health crisis,” he said.
According to him, the federal ministry of Communications and Digital Economy views entrepreneur from two perspectives: Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Innovation-Driven Enterprise (IDE) Entrepreneurship. And the IDE is the way forward, “the IDE is the game changer in terms of job and wealth creation.”
The policy is designed to us create an enabling environment to start and grow IDEs in Nigeria. By implementing the policy, we will create IDE mindset and skillset and learn how to do business in our communities.
He said, unicorn companies (Unicorn is a term used in the venture capital industry to describe a startup company with a value of over $1 billion., are expected to create over three million jobs by 2025 and that with this policy Nigeria will not miss out. “By 2025, unicorn will create 3m jobs and this policy will enable us to benefit from that and help the government lift Nigerians out of poverty.”
Abimbola Alale, Director General Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited (NigComSat), said the policy is what we will be talking about in the next days because this is what will drive African Free Trade Agreement.
Bisi Adegbuyi, Post Master General Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST), I congratute the Minister and the DG NITDA, for once again showing the way at this time when our resources and incomes are dwindling.”
Mohammad Abubarka, DG, Galaxy Backbone thank the minister for coming up with this policy that will drive government plans and programmes.
Aliyu Aziz, Director General, National Identity Management (NIMC), said this policy will help to provide, promote guarantee the growth of digital economy.
With this policy things are expected to change for the better as local innovations will get priority attention from the federal government and the necessary support needed by startups to grow fully and support the economy in the areas of job and wealth creation.
