Opeke gives tips on Nigeria’s connectivity challenges

Chief Executive Officer of MainOne Cable Company, Ms. Funke Opeke has said that the possible solution to Nigeria’s connectivity challenges is for the country to formulate policies that would encourage infrastructure sharing among operators.

Opeke highlighted this while fielding questions from the press, recently, adding that Nigeria needed to work on a number of critical issues, such as, infrastructure sharing, create the enabling environment, a relaxed tax environment and reduce regulation in order to fast track broadband connectivity in the country.

She said, “In my own opinion, those things that can fast track Nigeria’s move to deepen connectivity include infrastructure sharing, creating the enabling environment, relaxed tax environment, no over regulations, ensure national fibre backbone and license InfraCos.”

Aside from the above, she added that local content must be built, with data stored locally at data centres, believing that when all these are in place, ICT will impact healthcare, education and transportation.

According to her, broadband connectivity shouldn’t be a telecommunications operators’ issue alone, but a national development, while the drive for broadband penetration should be an overall economic agenda of the country.

She warned that these challenges repel investment and until some of these challenges are addressed, Nigeria would continue to lose investment to other African countries like Kenya and South Africa.

She cited prevailing factors militating against investment in Nigeria to include, a harsh economic environment, poor and lack of infrastructure, no ease of doing business metrics, the barriers to entering the ICT and telecoms’ business in Nigeria.

WAIFEM, Financial Journalism centre, partner on budget workshop

. Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, others expected

Afolabi Adesola

The West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM) in collaboration with Centre for Financial Journalism (CFJ Nigeria) is organising a workshop on Budget Monitoring and Reporting for Financial Analysts and Journalists.

The five-day workshop is scheduled for July 17-21, 2017, at the Central Bank of Nigeria’s International Training Institute (ITI) Abuja; and is funded by the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) and WAIFEM.

The workshop will draw participants from West African countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin Republic, Niger, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea Bissau. The participants will come from the Central Banks and Ministry of Finance of the various West African countries, the West African Monetary Institute (WAMI), West African Monetary Agency (WAMA), BCEAO, ECOWAS and Media Houses (Television, Radio, Newspapers and Online publications) in the West African sub-region.

According to a statement issued in Lagos by WAIFEM and CFJ Nigeria, and made available to The Daily Times, “the objective of the workshop is to sharpen the skills of Financial Analysts in public institutions and the fourth estate of the realm in budget tracking, monitoring and reporting. This, the organizations said, is to enable them to track, monitor and report the annual budgets of national and sub-nationals to ensure accountability and transparency in all phases of the budget process since these are prerequisites for effective and efficient service delivery and inclusive government”.

Economists, financial experts and other resource personnel expected to facilitate the success of the workshop include, include: Director General of West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management, Professor Akpan H. Ekpo; Advisor, Business Development and Consultancy Unit of WAIFEM, Professor Douglason G. Omotor; Chief Consultant, B. Adedipe Associates, Dr. Biodun Adedipe; President/CEO, Time Economics, Dr. Ogho Okiti, and Chief Executive of Centre for Financial Journalism, Mr. Ray Echebiri.

Tony Nwakaegho