Nigeria first homegrown and biggest automobile manufacturer Innoson Group in collaboration with investors from China are set to invest $1 billion in the country’s ICT sector.
This money will go towards a number of government projects among other salient projects. About $400 million has already been set aside for use in Nigeria’s Digital Switch Over (DSO) by the year 2017. A move that will help Nigeria migrate from the current analog broadcasting to digital via the Digital Satellite TV Station.
A breakdown of this sum shows $300 million to go towards setting up of a local production and supply plant for a minimum of 5-8 million set-top boxes. The remaining $100 million will be used to set up a technology and biggest Direct-To-Home (DTH) Digital BING TV Station across all the Nigerian States.
The BING TV Project is also said will engage the Nigerian Communication Satellite (NIGCOMSAT) with some benefits including foreign exchange earnings. Such as purchasing of locally available goods and services, as opposed to engaging with the foreign vendors of the satellite and transponders.
Vice President, Pro. Yemi Osinbajo, said, “Manufacturing in Nigeria is a primary objective of this government, it is a work we intend to do in the next few years to manufacture and produce in Nigeria as much as we can.”
VP Prof. Osinbajo and Chief Innocent Chukwuma the Chairman and CEO of Innoson Group received a consortium of Chinese investors at the Presidential Villa. The Chinese entourage included the Deputy Minister of Communist Party of China in Shandong Province, Liu Baoju and the Senior Vice President of Inspur Group and President of its Overseas Headquarters, Huang Gang.
The remaining $600 million will go towards investment in other key sectors of the Nigerian economy. There is also news of another ongoing negotiation seeking a second round of investment work $600 billion. A fund that if successfully lobbied, will be used to set up a Smart City CCTV camera among other IT solutions.
The IT solutions will be used to bring IT-based solutions to taxation, boost cloud computing, and improve e-education all leveraging on big data across all federal universities and polytechnics.
