* Govt Patronage Is Very Low
Dr. Agu Collins Agu is the Director, Infrastructure and Technical Support Services of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). In this interview with NKECHI ONYEDIKA-UGOEZE in Abuja, he stressed the need for our local ICT products to meet international standards.
What is the local content of ICT all about?
When we talk of local content, it is basically how much of products that are indigenous to Nigeria. In NITDA, we realised long ago that one of the ways to drive the knowledge economy is by building local content and special capacity development. We have the Office of ICT and Entrepreneurship, which was set up to promote innovative ideas while we also have Office of Nigerian Content (ONC), which promotes and protects the Nigerian brand.
For instance, if you are producing software here, the office ensures it is within standards and that is why we have set up an office in Lagos for software testing to be sure that it conforms with international standards, so that people won’t have any reason not to patronise them. The office makes sure that multinationals and government patronise made in Nigeria ICT products.
We have gone ahead supporting our Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) like Omatek, Zinox and others, by making sure that all government procurements that involve computers come with locally made PCs. Though there are challenges when it comes to quality and after-sales services, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, we are having constant meeting with OEMs and we carry out certification programmes every two years to make them sit up.
We support innovation hubs. We created a hub in Lagos, called idea hub, where a lot of start-ups are incubated and developed further. NITDA is also supporting hubs like TD4PA (Technology Development for Poverty Alleviation Initiative), which is an innovation hub in Kuje, FCT with primary focus on building capacity on emerging technologies like Internet Of Things(IOT) and develop card readers from scratch among others. The question is, do you want to wait and turn to a consumer or do you want to start building the capacity now?
How much local content has been achieved since 2002, when former President Olusegun Obasanjo gave the directive that the local content policy be implemented?
It might be a bit difficult to quantify because when the policy was announced by former President Obasanjo, the migration was slow because the awareness wasn’t there, so right now we are carrying out an intensive awareness programme after which we can create a penal system.
However, our people have done a lot on sensitization and awareness. Sometime this year, we had meeting with the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP) where we defined local content as 30 per cent Nigerian input. With the laws of MDAs, it was stated clearly that NITDA being a clearing house, anything ICT has to come through it. We make sure you patronise some of our local products. We deployed our observation projects called Knowledge Access Venues (KAV) which is part of the programmes we use to carry out grassroots penetration of ICT and we make sure that Nigerian satellite was used in line with localization of data and local content.
Where is Nigeria’s Silicon Valley?
Silicon Valley is not a particular location in respect to Nigeria. For instance, in Abuja, we have Abuja Technology Village (ATV) starting from the Airport Junction in Jabi, all the way towards the Airport on your left hand side, it is being developed gradually. So, that is Silicon Valley for Abuja. Another one you hear of is Yabacon Valley, especially, when the Chief Executive Officer of Facebook visited Nigeria. We have technology parks in Tinnapa. We equally have an ongoing project on Kano ICT park.
Do you have a time frame within which Nigeria can attain self-reliance in ICT?
That is a difficult question to answer because first of all, you have to get the energy system right. We can fix a time line the moment we start having reliable electricity, which is one way for us to get industrialised. Otherwise, it will be difficult because solar energy is still expensive. We still need a conventional electricity source to be able to drive some of these innovations.
Is NITDA satisfied with the quality of the indigenous ICT products?
Of course, we have good companies that develop very good applications but we still have rooms for improvement but government can keep patronizing our locally produced solutions and this will take us to another level. I don’t think government is patronising us as much as if should because if you check Japan for example, after the war, they grew up because government was giving them zero per cent credit for their industries and also patronizing them until they got to where they are today but in our case, government patronage is very low. Government need to patronize our indigenous solutions more.
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