Local firms tasked on global standards, AI adoption

The Managing Director of Financial Derivatives Company and Chairman of FCMB, Bismarck Rewane, has described the telecommunications revolution as one of the most significant transformations in Nigeria’s economy in the last 25 years.

Rewane said the arrival of MTN Nigeria in 2001 coincided with a period when access to communication was severely limited. He said the company’s entry, alongside the liberalisation of the sector, helped create an economy where communication and connectivity now underpin almost every major economic activity.

Rewane, speaking in Lagos, recalled that Nigeria had only about 250,000 fixed telephone lines in 2000, when NITEL operated as a state-owned monopoly. He said the country has since moved from severe scarcity to mass connectivity.

According to the Nigerian Communications Commission, Nigeria currently has 195 million active mobile subscriptions and 157 million active Internet subscriptions as of July 2026. “That tells you the scale of the transformation that has taken place in the Nigerian economy,” he said.

He said the change was equally evident in teledensity, which stood at about 0.4 per cent at the beginning of the period. According to him, the figure has now risen to almost 90 per cent, reflecting the extent to which mobile communication has become part of everyday life. “We moved from a country where less than one per cent of the population had access to telecommunications to one where connectivity is now available to the overwhelming majority of Nigerians,” Rewane said.

The economist also highlighted the enormous increase in investment that has accompanied the transformation. He said combined investment in the telecommunications sector was about $500 million at the beginning of the period but had grown to more than $75 billion. “That is not just money invested in telecommunications companies. That is investment in the Nigerian economy, investment in infrastructure and investment in the capacity of the economy to produce and transact,” he said.

Rewane noted that the wider economic effect is what makes the telecommunications industry particularly important to Nigeria’s growth story. “MTN and the other telecom operators have evolved from providing telecommunication services into becoming critical economic infrastructure and catalysts of growth,” he said.

He argued that the sector’s contribution must therefore be assessed not only by its direct GDP contribution but also by the economic activities it enables across banking, commerce, healthcare, transportation, education and other sectors.

The economist argued that the nominal contribution of telecommunications does not capture its full economic value. “If you look only at the numbers, you may say telecommunications contributes a certain percentage to GDP. But if you look at the effective value, you begin to see the linkages,” Rewane said.

In a related development, the Chief Financial Officer of MTN Nigeria, Modupe Kadri, has called on indigenous Nigerian enterprises to look beyond protectionism and build world-class operational capabilities capable of competing on the global stage.

Speaking at the Nigeria-South Africa Chamber of Commerce (NSACC) Breakfast Forum in Lagos, Kadri emphasised that sustainable domestic growth must be anchored on strict delivery discipline, innovation, and predictable market demand rather than policy entitlement.

Addressing top executives under the forum’s theme, ‘Building Local Content Together: 25 Years of Shared Growth’, Kadri maintained that economic empowerment requires genuine commercial synergy between multinational corporations and domestic supply chains.

“Shared growth is not charity; it is not public relations. It is an invited business logic. It is what happens when value circulates through businesses, people, government, ownership, and communities,” Kadri stated.

He cautioned that “local content must not mean substandard quality or entitlement simply because a company is Nigerian. The goal is not protection from global competition; the goal is preparation for competition.”

Reflecting on the telecommunications sector’s evolution over the past quarter of a century, the MTN CFO noted that while the initial phase of local content focused on civil works, site setups, and distribution, the next 25 years must pivot toward high-value digital assets. “In the first 25 years, local content was shaped by site rollouts and general logistics, but the next phase must embrace artificial intelligence, data, cloud infrastructure, 5G, and cybersecurity.”

The panel session featured prominent enterprise leaders who detailed how strategic corporate partnerships enabled domestic businesses to scale. Panelists included Group COO of Computer Warehouse Group (CWG), Afolabi Sobande; Group Managing Director of SO&U, Udeme Ufot; CEO of Seams and Stitches, Yemi Chukwurah, and Founder and CEO of BlackHouse Media (BHM), Ayeni Adekunle, The panellists highlighted how commercial opportunities and corporate access allowed their respective firms spanning IT, corporate uniform manufacturing, and strategic communications to transition from modest operations into continental enterprises.