By Michael Peter, The Sight News
Abuja:The Minister of Communications, Barr. Adebayo Shittu has disclosed that the Ministry has started the process for the institution of an ICT development Bank to bring about a revolution in that sector.
Speaking on Tuesday at the Smart Sustainable City Summit 2017 in Abuja, Shittu stressed the need for a smart evolution if Nigeria must continue to be part of the civilised world.
According to him,”Just as you have bank of industry, bank of agriculture, so shall you have a bank for the development of ICT in Nigeria. This we believe will assist in providing the needed funding for the ICT sector, instead of depending on the commercial banks”.
Barrister Shittu further noted that smart infrastructure generates data which may be transformed by government to generate new insight that may be monetised and sold to different stakeholders.
He said that, “The key is to generate a suitable value chain for such data and appropriate business model for the data at different layers. In addition big data analytics will reduce tax evasion thereby increasing tax revenue.
“Cities don’t just become smart. It takes strategic and integrated planning approach, and a comprehensive and high quality infrastructure to make them happen”.
He however acknowledged the huge infrastructure gap in the country as a major challenge in the actualisation of the smart cities initiative but noted that with the various reforms being undertaken by the Buhari administration, the initiative will succeed.
The Minister noted that the two day Summit with the theme, “Leveraging on technology solutions to improve the efficiency of cities”, is expected to take critical look at the level of preparedness and x-ray the huge business opportunities for providers in smart city technologies to exhibit and pitch their solutions and products to federal, states, local government top officials.
As the nation continues to experience massive rural urban migration, building smart cities has been described as key in handling the various challenges that is emanating as a result.
