Ericsson Lists Strategies to Digitise Nigeria
By Emma Okonji
Ericsson, which has been at the forefront of networked society, has stressed the need for Nigeria and other African countries to go digital and be at par with developed economies.
The newly appointed Managing Director of Ericsson Nigeria, Mr. Rutger Reman, who doubles as Ericsson’s Vice President, gave the advice at the weekend, during a press conference in Lagos.
He said the global technology evolution has made it necessary for Nigeria to go digital.
Reman said he was passionate about digitising Nigeria, while listing strategies to achieve the feat.
According to him, the 5th technology evolution, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud computing, are available technology that could digitize the entire country, through smart cities development, if well embraced and adopted.
Presenting Ericsson’s forecast for 2022, Reman said, as technologies evolve, more people would be connected, leading to an increase of 1.03 billion global mobile subscriptions in 2022, with about 14 times increase in smartphone usage, with an estimated manufacturing of about 75 million cellular IoT devices that would be connecting more people by 2022.
According to him, the resultant effect of the global growth would be on the increased growth of e-commerce, million hours YouTube video watch, growth in smartphone subscription on a daily basis, increase in FaceBook subscriptions, increase in financial technology (FinTech) solutions and more crowdfunding to boost technology startups.
All these would lead to global industry transformation, which Nigeria and other African countries must take advantage of, Reman said. He listed some of the transformation areas to include smart transport, smart building, smart travel, smart work, smart agriculture and land usage, smart services, among others, which he said, would be driven completely by information and communications technology (ICT).
“By the time all these are established, more people, estimated to be above 70 per cent, will live in the cities by 2050,” Reman added.
He further explained that for Nigeria to take advantage of the global revolution, the country must begin to invest in smart cities development. He said it would be nice when smart cities initiatives were developed in several cities of the country, to reduce the influx of people into few cities of the country. He however stressed the need for broadband availability to drive the entire process of digital transformation.
Head, Network Products at Ericsson Nigeria, Fisayo Araoye, spoke on the increasing growth of indoor market, which she said was be facilitated by wireless connectivity that would likely double by 2020 to about $6 billion market worth. She said indoor wireless data traffic would grow by 600 per cent 2020, and that Ericsson’s radio system and Radio Dot Live, present solution to wireless connectivity.
Head, IT & Cloud at Ericsson Nigeria, Mr. Oluwaseun Solanke, who spoke about digital transformation, explained that the emergence of new technologies would boost digital operations, digital engagement and digital services, while calling on organisations to take advantage of Ericsson’s digital solutions that have indices to reduces yearly information technology (IT) spend by 55 per cent and increase organisation’s revenue by 15 per cent.
