The Federal government has successfully secured access to approximately $500 million to kickstart a domestic funding initiative. The disclosure was made by Bosun Tijani, the Minister of Communication, Innovation, and Digital Economy, during a dinner event organised by the Tech community on Friday.
At the conclusion of the dinner, which was jointly hosted with the World Bank, Minister Tijani expressed, “So we’ve got access to about half a billion dollars to start local funding.”
Tijani elaborated on the government’s strategy to house domestic funding within Nigeria, ensuring its direct benefit to authentic Nigerian enterprises. He highlighted a collaborative effort with the Bank of Industry to realise this vision.
Emphasising the paramount importance of championing and empowering indigenous Nigerian businesses, Tijani affirmed, “We want to ensure that those businesses that will benefit are true, real Nigerian businesses.”
The minister stressed that by localising funding efforts, the government aims to cultivate the growth and advancement of homegrown ventures, ultimately contributing to the nation’s economic advancement.
Bosun assured the public that the initial $500 million earmarked for local funding serves as a starting point. He underscored that the government intends to attract more investors, thus augmenting the pool of funds available to support the nation’s innovators.
In line with its overarching objective, the government seeks to leverage these resources to attract additional investments and broaden the avenues of financial support for local entrepreneurs.
He added: “Part of my responsibilities is working with BOI 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.”
Also speaking to journalists at the event, World Bank’s Country Director to Nigeria, Shubham Chaudhuri, said the global financial institution has structured plans to collaborate with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), to ensure the successful rollout and registration of digital national IDs for all Nigerians.
According to him, the plan is to provide at least 148 million people of working age with 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.
Chaudhuri emphasized the potential of leveraging digital technologies to drive transformation and outlined two key areas of partnership with Nigeria to achieve these goals.
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 there 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.”
