FG Secures $500m for Digital Innovation, Entrepreneurship – Minister

The federal government has secured access to approximately half a billion dollars for local funding of innovation and entrepreneurship in the country’s digital sector, Communication, Innovation and Digital Economy Minister Bosun Tijani has disclosed.

Tijani spoke at a dinner organised by the Tech community in Abuja on Friday night.

“We’ve got access to about half a billion dollars to start local funding,” he told reporters.

He said  the fund would target  “true, real Nigerian businesses.”

He added that by domiciling the funding in Nigeria, the government aims to foster the growth and development of homegrown enterprises, ultimately contributing to the country’s economic progress.

He stressed that more investors would be brought on board, increasing the funds available to support Nigerian innovators.

He added,” Part of my responsibilities is working with BOI (Bank of Industry) to ensure that we domicile that funding locally in Nigeria, work with firms who manage and invest in businesses to ensure that those businesses that will benefit are true, real Nigerian businesses.

“And what we are going to see is that the funding is available locally and in the coming months it is going to become larger and as these funds become larger we want to leverage that money as well.

“So the government is not just going to put half a billion and that’s it, it can actually bring more investors to heart as we have more money, more of our innovators can have access to resources,” he said.

Also speaking to journalists at the event, World Bank’s Country Director to Nigeria, Shubham Chaudhuri, said the global financial institution had structured plans to collaborate with the National Identity Management Commission to ensure the successful rollout and registration of digital national IDs for all Nigerians.

He said no fewer than 148 million people of working age would be issued  a digital national ID by the middle of next year, marking a significant step towards inclusion and accessibility.

He further reaffirmed the organization’s commitment to eradicating poverty, improving lives, and creating job opportunities for the country’s youth.

He said:” Our main mission here in Nigeria is to eliminate poverty, make lives better, create jobs, for all Nigerian youth. One of the areas that we think have the greatest potential is the area of using digital technologies to transform. Now to do that it begins with having this digital national ID.

“So one of the main partnerships we have is working with NIMC to ensure the rollout of the registration so that all 213/220million Nigerians have a digital national ID, beginning of course with all people of working age and I think the target for that is at least 148 million people by the middle of next year.

“The second is helping Nigeria lead the broadband infrastructure for broadband connectivity because without broadband connectivity digital technologies will lead to a digital divide. So their support has been for good kinds of policies and regulations that will help invite private investment into this space and then fibre optic cables.

“One thing, for example, working with states to persuade states to reduce the right of way fees and fiber. Cable operators have to pay more when they’re getting the land to ray the cable, All that is like the foundations and real potential comes from once you have the national ID all the technologies that apps that can be built on the weather to bring services to people, to people where they get people access to finance that all of that needs skills.”