Pantami inaugurates committee on national digital economy policy

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami, has inaugurated experts review committee for the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS).

Pantami, who inaugurated the committee on Monday Abuja, said that digital economy had dominated the world and gave a background of how the policy came decision came about.

He explained that the review was to bring all documents together for discussion and added to the different aspects of the NDEPS in ways that were seamless and easy to assess.

He said that it would enable Nigeria to have a slice of the global digital economy, which experts valued at 11.5 trillion dollars or approximately 16 per cent of the global economy.

According to him, the President came up with this idea of developing a digital economy policy for Nigeria in 2019.

He said that the issue was presented to the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and the ministry started the implementation immediately.

“We have been working on the document simultaneously. There are things that are generally strategic.

“There are many pillars we have started implementing since. The draft of the policy was not produced in Nigeria.

“We engaged some of our friends and stakeholders to develop this policy.

“When we engage people from outside the country and they may not be able to know some of our challenges and peculiar data of the industry or bureaucracy of the government.

“The value is expected to grow significantly in coming years.

“The world economic forum has predicted that over 60 per cent of global GDP will be digitised by 2022.

“In the next decade, digital platforms will be used to create close to 70 per cent of new value.

“It is because of this that all the eight pillars we came up, we did so on our own personal work.”

He called on the committee to look into the pillars critically, work on it and see how it can be improved.

He added that all the parastatal agencies under the ministry had a role to play on the national policy.

Prof. Mohammed Abubakar, Managing Director, Galaxy Backbone (GBB) congratulated Pantami for coming up with such development that would help digital economy in the country and urged the committee not to take their duties lightly.

He also said that six of the pillars had to do with the GBB as it was part of the agency’s mandate to provide Information Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure for the pillars to be achieved and for the actualisation of a digital Nigeria.

Earlier, the Executive Vice Chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Pro. Umar Danbatta, wished the committee a good deliberation during their discussions.