August 12, 2013
Filling the ICT gap in rural communities
Johnson and Juwah
Despite the growth of Information and Communications Technology activities in the country, most rural areas are left out. STANLEY OPARA looks at the development and the hope of such communities
The Nigerian scenario, to a large
extent, has shown that the development of the ICT industry can remain
uneven for a long time, despite the huge successes recorded in the
industry.
Statistics on computer, phone and
Internet users as well as telecommunication subscriber base, have
continued to multiply. Ironically, this development has taken a single
dimension as the progress is mostly seen in the urban areas.
Rural areas, however, have continued to
be neglected amid a wide claim of ‘exponential growth’ in the ICT use
and application in Nigeria. This trend, admitted by operators and
regulators in the industry, has not been addressed.
With a lot being proposed by the
Ministry of Communications Technology and other stakeholders, the
scenario has not really changed.
This, therefore, has raised concerns among some players in the industry, who have called for a new approach.
Interestingly, the ministry and the
Nigerian Communications Commission say there is already a road map for
developing rural areas technologically. A special fund has been created
via the Act of Parliament to address this concern: it is the Universal
Service Provision Fund.
Recently, players in the Nigeria’s
telecommunications sphere under the Association of Telecommunications
Companies of Nigeria called for the removal of various impediments
against quick access to the USPF.
They unanimously agreed to the
relaxation of some of the bureaucratic bottlenecks making the fund
inaccessible to interested operators.
The operators, who made their views
known at a roundtable on Nigeria’s Broadband Plan 2013 – 2018 organised
by the association, maintained that though available, the USPF had
remained largely unreachable.
The President, ATCON, Mr. Lanre Ajayi,
said that the the fund should be well utilised by operators so that its
objectives would be realised by the ministry, the NCC, and other
stakeholders.
Ajayi, who admitted that so much had
been committed to create the fund via an Act of Parliament, urged
operators to develop plans that would help in attracting the fund to
them.
The ATCON boss advocated that instead of
creating more fund(s) to develop ICT in rural areas, the existing
funds, such as the USPF, could be revitalised and applied, since ICT
development of rural communities was among the major mandate of the
fund.
In the same vein, during an USPF-focused
industry roundtable held in Lagos last month, stakeholders in the
industry stressed the need for the USPF to be put into effective use to
facilitate the penetration of ICT in the country.
Expressing dissatisfaction with the
implementation of programmes in the 2007 -2011 Strategic Management Plan
of the fund, they called for a more encompassing and focused approach
in the 2013-2017 SMP.
The Secretary of the USPF, Alhaji
Abdullahi Maikano, said there was the need to take ICT to the rural
domains, considering the huge technology gap between the urban centres
and rural areas.
He said good implementation of USPF had gone beyond the provision of mere computers.
According to him, Internet connection
has taken the centre stage, and the USPF is committed to seeing that
dedicated fibre is used to connect Nigerians and critical institutions
like hospitals, school, local governments and other government’s
agencies.
In this light, he noted that 1,000 base
stations would be built per annum in collaboration with telecoms
operators in the country.
He said, “For this to be successful,
operating companies must participate, as it is their business to do so.
Fibre is our target here because the provision of bandwidth through
satellite is not sustainable.
“We will create clusters for all these
and six consultants are currently working on the cluster creation.
There would be a minimum of five clusters per geo-political zone to
ensure effective access and connectivity. To organise our environment,
we must provide broadband.”
In the new SMP, Maikano said financial
and non-financial models would be adequately addressed, as well as
capital expenditure and operation expenditure matters.
“Operators do not invest in rural areas
not because they don’t have money to do so, but because they don’t know
if profit will be made. So, they need to go into these arrangements with
someone. This is where t he USPF comes in,” he explained.
He said broadband had been declared a
fundamental human right by the International Telecommunications Union,
stressing that rural areas were not excluded.
“We want fibre to get to these areas and
at a reduced cost. We are focusing on areas where there are no
connections. We are not going to be operators, but we will provide
subsidies to encourage them. We’ll support it,” he added.
Amid all these, the ministry has
continued to harp on its intention to deliver on the promises of the
transformation agenda by addressing the challenges in the ICT industry,
while also leveraging the opportunities in the ICT for socio-economic
development.
It has also promised to speed up the
building of communications infrastructure so that every part of Nigeria
has access to good quality telecoms services and high-speed Internet;
ensure that Nigerians have affordable and reliable access to devices and
have the capacity to use them, so that everybody can share in the
benefits of ICTs.
Despite these, connectivity is still
concentrated in the urban and commercial areas; with approximately 40
per cent of the rural areas without mobile coverage
Experts, therefore, have called for an
increase in the spread and scope of communications infrastructure across
Nigeria, with priority given to the un-served andthe under-served
areas.
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