ATCON seeks diaspora investments in Nigeria’s $32b telecoms sector

THE Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) has urged Nigerians in the diaspora to come and invest hugely in the country’s burgeoning technology and telecommunications sector, estimated to worth over $32 billion.

ATCON, whose membership cuts across telephone operators, manufacturers, infrastructure providers, Internet Service Providers; equipment dealers; consulting and others, made this plea at the 2015 Nigeria Diaspora Information Communication Technology Conference (NiDICT) in Washington DC U.S.A.
President of the ATCON, Lanre Ajayi, while making this plea on behalf of other members, noted that so many market opportunities exist for would be investors.

Ajayi, an engineer said Nigeria is clearly a major market in the West Africa Sub-region with a population of over 150 million people. He stressed that Nigeria remains Africa’s most populous nation and is home to one out of every seven humans that inhabit the African Continent.

“It should also be emphasized that KPMG in renowned international consultancy company recently said in an event sponsored by NCC that the investment drive has become imperative as Nigeria would need about $10 billion investment in its broadband sector in the next five years with $2 billion investment yearly”, he stated, adding that the investment vacuum must be filled.

Ajayi, while referencing Houlin Zhao, International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Secretary-General at the 2014 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, who said Nigeria’s adoption of long term evolution (LTE/Fourth Generation (4G) technology which is one of the fastest in the world was highly commendable, “said ATCON encourages Nigerian Diaspora in the United State to invest heavily in Nigeria in order to tap into its huge investment opportunities in broadband.”

Citing some of the steps taking to further reposition the industry, Ajayi disclosed that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) will offer incentives like tax holidays between five and seven years and also provide financial incentives of between 15 per cent to 30 per cent of the operator’s capital expenditure (CAPEX), which will indirectly create an attractive environment for operators to go to areas they believe might be unattractive.

“The country has also entreched the open access model to actualize this. It would interest the audience to know that MainOne wins InfraCo licence for Lagos and North-Central InfraCo licence went to IHS Africa Plc.