Telecommunications giant, Globacom, has pledged continued support for the Federal Government’s agenda for the digitalization of the economy.
The Executive Vice Chairman of Globacom, Mrs. Bella Disu, made this known on Thursday at the launch of Nigeria’s Digital Economy Report themed ‘Driving Economic Growth through Digital Transformation’ at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja.
She underscored the importance of Nigeria continuing to harness the transformative powers of emerging technologies, while emphasising Globacom’s plan to enable technological advancement in Nigeria. Said she, “We see the current challenges in the sector as a responsibility to be at the forefront of enabling tech advancement. We are at the moment doing two things which key into the Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy’s strategic blueprint. Under the pillar of Knowledge, the ministry is planning to have about three million technical talents by 2027 and also increase digital literacy. In Glo, we have a Glo learning management solution which has the capacity to train up to 100,000 users a month on different skill sets from digital marketing and other professional courses some of which we plan to offer as CSR and also on courses covering Python, blockchain, AI to really push digital literacy”.
Mrs. Disu further noted that, as part of its strategy under innovation, Glo plans to have four innovation hubs, with one to be rolled out in Lagos in the fourth quarter of the year, and three to be commissioned by the second quarter of 2025 in PH, Ibadan, and Abuja. “We see these hubs as an ecosystem and a catalyst for technological advancement where we have hubs for tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, incubators and accelerators to really collaborate, thrive and learn”.
According to her, the impact of digitalization was already visible in a few sectors: “digital platforms have completely revolutionised the transportation and mobility services sector with ride-hailing companies facilitating hundreds of millions of rides in the last seven years, In ecommerce, the sector has grown significantly with online user market now about 76.7 million users. We have also seen a huge growth in POS terminals from about 155,000 in 2017 to now 1.8 million in 2023”.
Mrs Disu also added that “More and Nigerians are going into remote work, and with the right training, they will be able to take up even more lucrative roles in the sector. In entrepreneurship and start-ups, through fintech and content creation and startups, the opportunities are vast,” she pointed out, and pledged Globacom’s continued support for the sector.
She therefore gave kudos to the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, and the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Dr. Aminu Maida, for the commitment and political will that they have shown towards addressing the challenges in the telecom industry.
Dr Tijani in his speech at the event said that Nigeria’s huge population and resources had put the country in good stead to play a critical role in a connected economy adding, “We can only do that by diversifying our economy and strengthening technical efficiency. This is why there is immense focus on digitalizing our economy and accelerating development in sectors like agriculture and mining to improve quality of education so we can improve learning outcomes and as such deepen pour workforce, improve on transportation and infrastructure so that our economy can get the backbone that is required to make it work for our people”.
