Abuja, Oct. 26, 2023 Karl Toriola, the Chief Executive of MTN Nigeria, has advised states to create ICT parks to enable residents to acquire digital skills and attract investments.
He gave the advice in Abuja at the 29th Nigerian Economic Summit with the theme “Pathways for Sustainable Economic Transformation and Inclusion.
Toriola said the creation of ICT parks would be a veritable source of revenue to the states as there were a whole lot of opportunities that could be tapped from the telecommunication industry.
“For us, we think there are massive opportunities and we are just waiting for the states that are going to lead in this area as they will attract disproportionate amount of investment from our industry.
“I am waiting for the first state to create an ICT park.
“I am talking about a complete living environment where you allow limitless fibres to be deployed to those kinds of locations where you allow the leading technology into those kinds of locations, of course with the power infrastructure to attract investment, attract data centre, attract developers, and attract all kinds of data development and particularly data skills development into that state,”
He described digitisation as the only thing that would increase the productivity of the nation and any state that elects to take part of success.
“Developing data skills, creating an attractive investment environment for digital skills and digital investment into states, things like business process outsourcing are going to be a significant leaver to develop states and national economy,”
Toriola said some states, based on their resources, could create clusters of investment and work in partnerships around agriculture, mining which would give an enabling environment to investors to come and invest in border states for easy movement of goods and services.
He, however, called for policy consistency in states that intends to grow with digitisation.
He said players in the corporate world would not have the predictability to invest significantly in long-term businesses if there was no consistency of government policies. (GBN)
