Chinese pledge massive investment in Nigeria ICT sector
ABUJA, (CAJ News) – CHINESE firms have pledged investments amounting to $1 billion in Nigeria’s information and communications technology sector.
This emerged from a meeting between Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and a delegation from the Innoson Group and some Chinese businesses, including Shangdong Broadcasting Group.
Innoson Chukwuma, Innoson Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, led the delegation to the Presidential Villa.
Among other investments, Chinese firms would offer a credit facility of $300 million for local production and supply of 5-8 million set-top boxes for the digital switch-over in broadcasting in the country to meet a target date of June 2017.
There is a pledge of an investment of $100 million to establish technology-based direct-to-home digital Bing television stations.
There is a planned investment of $600 million for Smart City CCTV camera and IT solutions for taxation, both using Cloud Computing, and e-education IT solutions with big data centres in all federal universities and polytechnics in the country.
Meanwhile, Osinbajo said government would in the next few years actively pursue a plan for the massive manufacturing and production of goods in the country.
He said the administration would thus with business interests who can facilitate the plan.
“Manufacturing in Nigeria is a primary objective of this government, it is a work we intend to do in the next few years to manufacture and produce in Nigeria as much as we can,” said Osinbajo.
– CAJ News
