The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has said it is collaborating with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in building Information and Communications Technology (ICT) measurement capacity in Nigeria.
The initiative, Scan-ICT, was launched by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Government of Finland to ensure availability of quality data on ICT activities in Africa. It will create an enabling environment for the compilation of ICT indicators to be part of the activities of National Statistical Offices.
According to NITDA, the Scan-ICT initiative was designed to build support for the phased development of a comprehensive African capability to collect and manage information on key Information Society (IS) and ICT for Development (ICT4D)-related indicators to support the growing investment that African countries are making in ICT infrastructure development, deployment and usage, as well as support the ICT4D process in African countries aimed at facilitating their transition into the information society
Director-General of NITDA, Prof. Cleopas Angaye, said the main objectives of Scan-ICT are to determine ICT4D status and continuously scan basic ICT4D activities in each African country; develop and continually refine a set of IS/ICT4D indicators that can be used to measure ICT4D activities and progress in Africa and guide investments; and develop a continuous benchmarking strategy that can be implemented to improve performance of ICTs in Africa.
Other objectives of the initiative according to NITDA include: to develop sets of case studies to demonstrate best practices and share lessons learned in the innovative application of ICTs in different countries, carry out focused ICT4D research and development in order to strengthen the strategic management capacities of ICT4D policy development and investment in Africa, and maintain a capacity development strategy and plan for the sustainable collection, maintenance and provision of quality information on ICT4D activities in Africa.
Angaye said the Nigerian Scan-ICT is aimed at measuring the impact of ICT on socioeconomic development of the country. According to him, it will support Nigeria’s transition to an information society by building the capacity to collect and manage the kind of information and data that support and engineer growth and investment in the nation’s ICT sector.
As part of the Scan-ICT Nigeria project, desk research and field work have been carried out in the six geopolitical zones, in addition to a pilot that was undertaken in Lagos. This work was done in collaboration with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Source: thenationonlineng.net