Nigeria: IT has potential to outdo oil

By Henry Neondo

 Nigerian information technology (IT) sector has a potential to outstrip oil revenue generation but it needs to be developed, says World Bank. As a result of its potential, the World Bank says it is committed to invest US$60 million annually through enhancing broadband and business process outsourcing (BPO) market.

 Ismail Radwan, chief economist, World Bank office in Nigeria said at a summit in Lagos recently that the World Bank has been propping up the small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) in the information technology sector in Nigeria.

 He said the IT market in Nigeria is about to experience a boom following the landing of , Glo1 and Main One cables, two international submarine fibre optic cables promoted by Globacom and Main Street Technologies respectively will improve bandwidth 600 times faster, adding that policies and actions of the Federal Government have also led to improvement in electricity supply.

 Nigerian IT market can have access to the $50 billion and is the 3rd largest IT market in the world,”  said experts at the meeting.

 Outsourcing is a $250 billion business growing at 25 per cent yearly. The country receives more revenue from outsourcing than it does from oil. It earned $50 billion from IT outsourcing as at March 2010 and the market has grown at 43 per cent between 2006 and 2008.

 Dr. Jimson Olufuye, president, Information Technology Association of Nigeria (ITAN) said the country is urgently searching for areas to increase revenues and outsourcing is one of them.