By Yusuf Boluwatife
The Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy has directed the National Communications Commission (NCC) to provide grants for tertiary institutions to enhance research on robotics and emerging technologies.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isah Pantami disclosed this on Tuesday during the International Conference on Computing and Advances in Information Technology at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria.
The three-day conference which was organised by the institution’s Department of Computer Science of the institution was themed, “Fostering Digital Economy Through Recent Trends in Information Technology’’.
Speaking at the event, Pantami said the ministry was passionate about supporting emerging technologies in the area of 5G, artificial intelligence, robotics and many more.
To achieve this, the minister said he directed the NCC to come up with research grants that would be given to higher institutions to partake on research in emerging technology.
He said, “There was a meeting about three weeks ago to review proposals sent by academics in order to see how the Federal Government would support them with research grants in the area of emerging technologies.”
The minister noted that according to the World Economic Forum, as at 2016, the global contributions of ICT to economic development stands at 16 per cent, and the figure has been predicted to reach 50 per cent by 2022.
Pantami further stated that the global economy had been digitalised; new opportunities were coming up, particularly with the emergence of disruptive technology like artificial intelligence, robotics, 5G, quantum computing, virtual realities and many more.
“All these aspects of emerging technologies come up with new opportunities that make ICT to dominate the world economy; as it is today, ICT was a key enabler to the growth and development of the world economy,’’ the minister said.
He added, “In the first quarter of 2021, the fastest growing economy in the country was ICT, in the second quarter of 2021, the contribution of ICT to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 17.92 per cent.”
He stated that of the 16 developed national policies, more than a dozen were being implemented, like the `National Digital Economy Policy Strategy for a Digital Nigeria”, which he described as the umbrella policy upon which other policies were developed.
Pantami said the ministry was coming up with subsidiary legislation and regulatory instruments to support the development of ICT sector in the country.
