ITU ranks Nigeria ready for digital transformation

New report by International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has ranked Nigeria high at 71 per cent in comparative legal, policy and governance frameworks towards G5-advanced state of readiness for digital transformation, known as G5.

Germany, Finland and Singapore lead the global chart.

In the report, conducted by ITU and the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), unveiled by Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani in Abuja, Nigeria was ranked among Africa’s top seven BEMECS 5G Readiness Index, which represented the country’s readiness to deploy and adopt mass-market 5G networks.

Titled: ‘Collaborative Regulation: Accelerating Nigeria’s Digital Transformation’, and presented at the Digital Economy Complex, Mbora, Abuja by ITU’s Kagwira Nkonge, the report, among other things, presented a case study for ‘collaborative regulation review to assess and support Nigeria’s transition towards collaborative digital governance, evidence-based policymaking and agile regulation in the digital economy.”

The report, which was presented to a cross section of key industry stakeholders, including service providers, government agencies, representatives of multilateral institutions, West Africa Telecommunications Regulators Assembly (WATRA), Africa Telecommunications Union (ATU), among others, was also designed to complement existing cross-country benchmarks in which features of countries policy and regulatory environment are assessed.

NCC explained in a statement, yesterday, that the features of countries policy and regulatory environment were assessed based on the pillars of the Generations of Regulation frameworks, which tracks telecoms regulatory maturity towards digital transformation readiness, designated at G5 Advanced State of Readiness and for which Nigeria currently stands at G4.

Advanced State of Readiness is benchmarked against four critical levels of accomplishments, which include national collaborative governance, policy design principles, digital development toolbox, digital economic policy agenda, with Nigeria scoring 91 per cent in regulatory capacity; 82 per cent in Market Rules; 81 per cent in Collaborative Governance; 76 per cent in Legal Instruments for ICT/Telecom markets; 69 per cent in National Digital Agenda Policy, among other benchmarks.