This year, we had Mr. Jim Ovia of Zenith Bank Plc, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Chief Leo-Stan Ekeh of Zinox Technologies Ltd., Mr. Chinenye Mba-Uzoukwu of GrandCentral and Mr. Akinwale Goodluck (Corporate Services Executive) of MTN Nigeria Ltd. in attendance.

The event was held yesterday February 26th, 2009 at the MUSON Center, Onikan, Lagos and officially started at about 9:30am and lasted until about 5:15pm.

Ijeoma Nwogwugwu, the editor of Thisday, The Saturday Paper was the moderator of the event.

Mr. Jim Ovia gave the first presentation where he talked on the topic: Empowering The Nigerian Masses Through Communication.

He described the masses as the less privileged, poor or less fortunate members of our society. In examining the digital divide, he shared some statistics such as the average income per capita being about US$500. Teledensity as at 2008 is 40% and only a measly Internet penetration of 2%.

He stated that the only way Nigeria can become one of the largest economies in the world by 2020, is through technology. In addition, the per capita income has to improve to about US$1,000. He also stated that Internet penetration is important for a country to become developed. He cited the cases of India, China and Singapore.

In stating some of the challenges to Internet penetration in Nigeria he made a rather interesting point that the greatest challenge to Internet penetration was the high cost of broadband access and not necessarily the cost of Internet hardware like PCs as we might have initially thought. NITEL’s monopoly over SAT-3 hasn’t helped either. Every time NITEL staff are on strike, Internet users are adversely affected. Internet Service Providers have to develop backup routes for Internet traffic to cater for their customers when such is the case.

In closing, he stated the top ten strategies for empowerment which I’ll briefly enumerate:

1. Strengthen education
2. Promote trade and e-commerce
3. Create employment
4. Distribute locally, relevant information
5. Promote local entrepreneurship
6. Target disadvantaged and marginalized groups
7. Improve agriculture
8. Social mobility
9. Improve health care
10. Encourage good governance

The next presentation was made by Engr. Ernest Ndukwe of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) on the State of Telecoms Development in Nigeria and Sustaining the Next Growth Phase.

He started off by giving a few statistics on the telecoms market in Nigeria: Average annual telecoms growth in Nigeria has been at 8 million lines per annum since 2001. Africa has 280 million subscribers and recorded an annual growth of 38% in 2007. This (for the first time) surpassed the number of mobile users in the US (277 million).

In stating some of the challenges facing incumbent telecoms operators in the country, he referred to something he calls the Incumbent Disease where he described it as being the reluctance of existing telecoms operators to interconnect with new operators coming into the market. It’s the job of the NCC to check such behavior.

In stating the road map for the NCC this year, he said that their primary focus will be to facilitate faster roll out of broadband services in Nigeria.

He also mentioned that the NCC will work on resuscitating the activities of the Digital Bridge Institute. A capacity building institute that was nearly going defunct ever since it was brought under the management of NITEL.

By the side, I learned that the NCC has actually published guidelines on infrastructure sharing which encourages infrastructure owners to share these infrastructure with other operators removing the unnecessary need of building new infrastructure in many cases. Operators like Visafone and Etisalat are enjoying the dividends of this provision already through fibre-optic cable and cell-site sharing agreements.

An individual from a telco asked a question about what the NCC was doing about the 2.3GHz and 2.5GHz spectrum that was being utilized by the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission and the response was that there are ongoing talks with the NBC to see how they can release the spectrum for telcos to use in broadband deployments. At the moment, the release of the 2.3GHz spectrum looks more promising.

Also, it was learned that the 3.5GHz (a.k.a extended c-band) spectrum currently being enjoyed by telcos was originally operated by NIGCOMSAT until they had problems with their satellite. They still have plans of launching another satellite and it is learned that the NCC is discussing with them to use the proper c-band spectrum which makes a better business case than the extended c-band spectrum.

One other individual raised the question about what the NCC was doing to encourage MVNO startups and national roaming and the response from the chairman was really interesting. He said in a country where the operators can barely provide good service for their customers (due to inadequate capacity), it would be foolish to start making moves in those directions. Nigeria as a whole has probably about 15,000 masts, in mainland UK alone, there are over 40,000 masts. He said when the companies have built much capacity, no one will have to tell them before they start to invite MVNOs.

After the question and answer section, Mr. Chinenye Mba-Uzoukwu of GrandCentral gave a presentation on the topic: At the Outskirts of Our Vision: Our Past Need Not Be Our Destiny.

A rather engaging presentation. Mr Chineye was there to “peel the onions” as he took us through interesting facts comparing Nigeria and the rest of the world. He hammered on the lack of local content available on the Internet on Nigeria and by Nigerians and warned about how we cannot attain any level of development by being consumers instead of producers. He discussed the global financial crises and how the way to address the problem the crises has caused is to be creative.

Here’s some statistics that will disturb you. Half of a Yellow Sun - a novel by Chimamanda Adichie sold 255 thousand copies last year. 250 thousand of which where sold in the UK and only 5 thousand copies sold in Nigeria.

He also explained how capital flight is still occurring even with all the technology around us. Think about it, all the handsets, connectivity, bandwidth and content being consumed are produced outside the country.

What Chinenye is advocating for includes building a domestic Internet with local content and local connectivity (did someone mention NIXP?). We must choose to become producers. We can be better producers if we are properly educated.

The morning session was ended by the presentation Chief Leo-Stan Ekeh of Zinox Technologies Ltd. made on A computer on every Nigerian desktop: Myth or Reality.

Chief Ekeh (interestingly) made his presentation without slides and was as direct as he could be relating his experience as an entrepreneur – the rewards, challenges and accomplishments he has been able to make with Zinox Computers.

One of such, was the recently completed city-wide free Internet access in Enugu State. See here and here for more information. Chief Ekeh’s dream is to see computers on every Nigerian desktop and not only that but have 60% of all Nigerians computer literate by the year 2019.

One other thing Chief Ekeh will like to accomplish is to bring down the cost of Internet access so that a student in the University will have to pay no more than ₦5,000 per year to have unlimited access to the Internet.

One of Chief Ekeh’s concerns is that a lot of ICT companies in Nigeria make a lot of noise and would like to see ICT companies really making a difference in the society.

After his session, there was a questions and answers session and then a tea break.

On returning, there was a session by Ronke Oyeneye (Head or Legal and Regulatory Affairs  – MTN Nigeria Ltd.) on the MTN Foundation and their accomplishments.

Afterwards, Mr. Akinwale Goodluck (Corporate Services Executive – MTN Nigeria Ltd.) gave the concluding presentation on Developing a definite mobile broadband policy for Nigeria.

He talked about how the average revenue per user (ARPU) in advanced countries is about $30/mo whilst in Africa, it varies between $4 and $20/mo. In such markets, the economic driver is volume of talk. Since it’s majorly a voice driven market.

He went on to explain the disparity between what we call broadband in Africa (300 – 500kbps) and what is regarded as broadband in other countries (1mbps and above).

He mentioned that deploying broadband not only requires speed but also the content to make the speed worth the deployment. There’s no use having a 1mbps pipe if you just check your email and do light surfing. You have got to use data intensive applications to justify the installation.

It is their belief that as the market develops, there will be a shrink on voice usage and more demand for data services.

And the event was brought to a close by the editor of the Technology Times Newspaper, Mr. Shina Badaru.

I hope you found this roundup useful. It’s not a bad way to launch your blog now is it?