For The Sake Of Local Content Growth

The need to build local content into ICT products designed for use in Nigeria has become very necessary as the sector continues to record phenomenal growth.

This has become obviously necessary following fears being expressed by stakeholders, interest groups and patriotic citizens over the negative implications over-dependence on foreign ICT applications could cause the country.

This preference for foreign made ICT applications is a misnomer, which do not only have a negative impact on the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but also exposes her to neo-colonialism invariably leaving the nation and her economy at the mercy of foreign concerns.

Countries that have excelled in ICT application understood the need for adaptation of local content and responded appropriately. China for example, had ensured in 2003 that foreign IT companies doing business in China such as Compaq, HP, and Dell among others incorporate Chinese encryption standard sourced from local Chinese IT firms into their computer hardware and chips before they could be sold in China. That policy paid off; and today China is better for it.

Although a similar policy exist here in Nigeria but the result has not been very evident despite the efforts of the country's local Original Equipment Manufacturers-OEMS at ensuring that a reasonable level of local content is injected into their products by adjusting some of the computer hardware such as the mouse and keyboard to suite local purpose.

This magazine believes that a country as rich as Nigeria with abundant human and natural resources requires more than mere modification of computer components. Nigeria has the resources to set up incubators, chip manufacturing companies, software parks and other ICT infrastructure where people will be trained to develop both software and hardware components from local sources.

This is why we agree with a school of thought which suggests that a functional petro-chemical industry is what is urgently needed to have local content built into ICT products manufactured here such as the mouse and keyboard. This magazine therefore, believes that the government has an important role to play in this direction.

The government should as a matter of urgency and national importance, revamp the country's dead and ailing petro-chemical and agro-allied industries which bye products are not only useful to the ICT sector but the entire manufacturing sector.

It should ensure the creation of an enabling environment that will allow all the required experts needed to actualize this goal.