Dr. Omobola Johnson, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications Technology, has revealed that research has shown that the Internet can contribute up to USD $300bn to Africa’s GDP by 2025.
Johnson revealed the details at the 2014 DEMO Africa event, which was held in Lagos this past week. Johnson stated that: “The increase in the number of mobile subscribers has fueled increases in mobile internet use in Africa, and we are considered to be at the cusp of a mobile internet revolution.”
According to the research, mobile internet use in Africa will increase by over 20 fold over the next five years. Johnson added that: “This is double the estimated growth rate in the rest of the world. Lower priced devices (in particular smart phones and tablets), increase investment in network infrastructure, and increase availability of spectrum for mobile broadband are among the factors that will drive this growth.”
According to Johnson: “Africa is rising and it’s time to invest in Africa. Aside from Asia, we are the fastest rising continent and we are very excited as a government about the prospects that we are seeing in our young. I would urge the demonstrators to believe that it is possible to be the next Alibaba.”
Online Businesses fueling economy
Swinging the focus to Nigeria, last week, Managing Director of online hotel booking platform Jovago, Marek Zmyslowski, at the ongoing 3rd EU-Nigeria Business Forum stated that online businesses have contributed to the growth of the Nigerian economy.
Zmyslowski added that with the influx of online businesses in Nigeria, the economy has seen a significant boom. Zmyslowski noted, “Agriculture and Oil used to be the leading sources of the Nigerian economy, but with the rebased GDP it was shown that these two industries together only account for 37.9% of the Nigerian economy. A bigger percentage of 51% was allocated to services of which online businesses play a big part of.” He went on to say that “the rebasing of the GDP merely reinforced the fact that Nigeria is the biggest economy in Africa, a fact which has been long evident from Nigeria’s booming economy.”
Darryl Linington
