The Federal Government has announced new progress in the digital economy sector, with Honourable Minister Dr. Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, outlining the country’s next steps to improve internet connectivity through Project BRIDGE.
The initiative aims to deploy 90,000 kilometers of fibre-optic cable across Nigeria to ensure reliable broadband access in both urban and rural communities.
Speaking on ARISE Prime Time, Dr. Tijani highlighted that investment in Nigeria’s digital economy has grown significantly. According to him, the sector attracted $191 million in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the first quarter of 2024, a ninefold increase compared to previous years.
“When you look at the graphs of GDP in Nigeria up until the point where we did full liberalization, it was almost flat. But the moment full liberalization came, you started seeing a very steep upward movement in diagram graph. And the reason is that the sector that I supervise is truly today responsible for driving up productivity in nearly any other sector in the country. Imagine what banking was like before internet became ubiquitous in Nigeria,” the Minister explained.
The Minister stressed that Nigeria’s digital economy is directly linked to job creation.
“If this sector was allowed to continue to struggle we were going to be losing significant jobs and we could trace about in Nigeria today about half a million jobs to that sector. And if they started struggling, what will happen is they’ll start shedding jobs and as they start shedding jobs those will be our people that used to be gainfully employed that would not be employed,” Dr. Tijani stated.
He added that the sector has not only avoided job losses in the past two years but has also seen steady increases in employment. Telecommunication companies in Nigeria have also made large investments, spending more than $1 billion on equipment from original manufacturers.
“The other thing that we track is investment in the sector and we have authoritative information from original equipment manufacturers that Nigerian telecommunication companies have paid over $1 billion for equipment that is coming into this country because we’ve also mandated that if we allow you increase in tariff you must also invest in infrastructure to ensure that the quality of the experience of our people will be on the rise,” he said.
The Federal Government is now preparing a $2 billion fibre-optic infrastructure project, set to begin in the last quarter of 2025.
The Minister clarified that while the rollout has not yet started, funding discussions are at an advanced stage, with support from international partners.
“No, we’ve not rolled it out yet. The work we’ve been doing is actually mobilizing the money which is being led by the World Bank. So we’re a couple of weeks away from confirming that leadership for a chunk of the funding, which is about $500 thousand. I spent the entire day today reviewing a set of document with folks from the bank which is focused on helping us mobilize 51% of the total that we require towards being able to deploy this,” he explained.
According to the Minister, the government has already completed the high-level design for the fibre network and is encouraging strong local participation.
“We’re in fact encouraging more local investors to invest in it because we want a strong local participation and ownership of the infrastructure. The design is so exciting that we expect that every geopolitical zone, every state will have what we call the fiber rings. Every local government will have fiber rings and every ward will have what we call Point of Presence which means the typical home in Nigeria shouldn’t be more than about a kilometer or two from a point of presence of fiber,” Tijani noted.
To address connectivity gaps, the Ministry has also launched a rural connectivity project, piloted in Kura, Abuja. Plans are underway to deploy 7,000 towers to communities currently not connected.
“Once we have ubiquitous connectivity, you will start to see smart application of connectivity and internet in agriculture, education and security. A lot of the places where we can’t secure at the minute, the reason why we can’t secure them is that most of them are off the grid. They’re not connected. And it’s why we also launched our rural connectivity project which we’ve piloted here in Kura in Abuja. And we’re now working on deploying 7,000 towers to communities that are currently not connected,” the Minister said.
He stressed that the President has directed that no community should be left behind in the digital economy rollout.
The fibre-optic rollout is designed as a five-year project. Dr. Tijani explained that the Ministry is already training workers and businesses to support the large-scale deployment.
“The target we’ve set for ourselves is a project lifespan of 5 years. But we are aggressively going out there to 5 years from the end of this year to actually do the digging and deploy because what we’re deploying is 90,000 km fibre network. So it’s quite significant and to be able to do that we’re actually intentionally training folks on the science of how to handle this cable which is a special kind of cable, fiber optic cable, how to slice it, how to dig the ground to lay it in a manner that is safe and sustainable. So we’re going to be training close to 5,000 people to be able to do that. We will train small businesses that will also support that entire process so that we can deploy these folks en masse across the country based on that design that we’ve released two weeks ago and hopefully we can get to a point where in 3 years time wherever you find yourself in Nigeria you will have access to quality connectivity,” Tijani explained.
The Minister noted that the project will also strengthen Nigeria’s position as a regional hub for broadband infrastructure.
“We’re already a regional hub for connectivity, but we want to strengthen that so that digital economy also will become stronger. The 90,000 km fibre that we’re laying our goal is also to ensure that that same fiber can be used to connect Nigeria, Republic of Benin, a part of Cameroon, all the neighboring countries which will also bring value to our economy from that investment,” he said.
Dr. Tijani also shared that his active involvement with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has placed Nigeria in a historic position.
“This is the level of thinking and that’s what led me to becoming extremely active at the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) level where now I’ve also now been elected as the vice chair for the ITU council,” he said.
On broadband penetration, the Minister reported steady progress, with coverage rising from 46 percent to 48 percent, representing an increase from 90 million to about 103 million internet users.
“We’ve moved from 46 to 48%. So we’re quite close to half. But if you look at it in terms of number, that’s gone from about 90 million, I think, to about 103 million or something like that,” he said.
He explained that right of way issues had been a major barrier to fibre deployment, but new partnerships with state governments have led to progress.
“What we’ve also done in terms of what we promised was right of way has always been a barrier for those who want to invest and we noticed that it will also be a barrier for the investment we wanted to make. So we’ve been working with the state, and since we came into office 11 states have zero-rated right of way for those who want to lay fiber and we’re still working with more states to be able, and this is something that this sector has been chasing for years,” he added.
On whether rising costs in the telecommunications industry represent a setback or advantage, the Minister explained that government intervention was necessary to accelerate infrastructure growth.
“Even for the private sector, whilst we need to give them some allowance for them to be able to continue to invest, they can’t get us there fast enough which is why government is floating this special purpose vehicle to invest $2 billion in fiber cable because if you want to wait for the private companies to get fiber into every local government in this country, I think we’ll be waiting for another 20 to 25 years,” Tijani said.