e-Nigeria: A Laudable Initiative

It would be foolhardy for anybody to argue the naked fact that Nigeria, like other developing nations of the world, has a huge gulf separating her from the rest of the other technologically advanced nations. It was not until 2001 when Nigeria joined the league of GSM services provider nations that the country's march to the arduous task of bridging the glaring digital divide, could be said to have commenced.

Before this year that unarguably marked the country's practical revolution in its communications sector, the Nigerian nation was conspicuously absent from the comity of nations that had made appreciable advancement in the deployment of IT tools and applications in the day to day running of private and public businesses. Little or no attention was paid to embracing the technologies that have reshaped the face of the world.

Today, Nigeria seemed to have suddenly discovered the inevitability in the application of IT tools as the driving force in public and private businesses as well as its importance in the country's overall economic development. Even governments at various levels have shown enormous understanding of the importance of IT in the art of governance.

This is reflected in the deployment of computers in various government ministries, departments and agencies through the Computer for All Nigeria initiative (CANi), the National e-Government Strategies, the Wire Nigeria Initiative (WIN), the State Broadband Accelerated Initiative (SABI), and other similar initiatives.

The annual e-Nigeria Conference packaged by National IT regulator, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), is one of the avenues by which stakeholders in the IT environment are brought together to brainstorm on various topical IT issues aimed at growing that sector of the economy.

The maiden edition of the annual event held in March of 2003, which focused on ICT deployment in the Nigerian public service resulted to some positive developments at the government circle. The Enterprise Technology Centre established at the Federal Secretariat Complex with over 60 Permanent Secretaries and some other senior government functionaries having undergone trainings, was a product of that conference.

In 2004, the event was held to look at the implementation of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process in the West African sub-region. The outcome of that Conference is today being implemented in the sub-region in collaboration with the ECOWAS Secretariat.
The Conference in 2005, focused on the development and deployment of ICTs in rural Nigeria. A Standing Committee was formed to see to the implementation of that conference communiqué. Today, NITDA has initiated some programmes aimed at accelerating IT penetration in rural Nigeria.

This year, with the theme: 'Software development and its application in the Nigerian economy', the e-Nigeria Conference will attempt to look at the place of software in the overall development of the Nigerian economy. It is worthy of note that this is coming at a time local software developers are lamenting that they lack the support to grow the industry locally.

ICT TODAY commends the choice of this year's theme and the courage of the organizers of this event, hoping that all issues militating against the growth of the local industry in particular and the software industry in general, would be properly tackled. The past editions of this event has been achieving results, this year's cannot be any different