IT Investments in Nigeria to top $5.3bn In 2016
Information technology (IT) spending in Nigeria will top $5.3 billion in 2016 as organisations increasingly embrace digital transformation initiatives in a bid to streamline their costs and bolster flexibility according to technology research and consulting services firm, International Data Corporation (IDC).
Mark Walker, IDC’s associate vice president for Sub-Saharan Africa speaking in Lagos at an event to announce a series of ‘IDC FutureScape Predictions’ for the year ahead said, “Some combinations of the technologies of the 3rd Platform – namely mobility, cloud, Big Data analytics, and social business – sit at the heart of most digital transformation efforts across Nigeria.”
He said, “Smart City initiatives, whether greenfield or brownfield, are driving greater adoption of 3rd Platform technologies as well as a deeper paradigm shift on the part of governments, technology users, and vendors. Indeed, the success of Smart City initiatives will play a role in Nigeria’s digital transformation journey in 2016.”
IDC’s country manager for West Africa, Bola Adisa, said, “In Nigeria, the democratisation of information is preparing the country for a digital future and enabling it to become included in the digital economy.”
IDC predicts ICT spend in Nigeria would grow 6.5 per cent year- on- year in 2016, with mobile devices responsible for much of the increase.
The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem is another key facet of the digital transformation revolution beginning to take place in Nigeria. IoT applications in the government, retail, transportation, manufacturing, and utilities verticals would offer the greatest growth opportunity for vendors operating in Nigeria, while security is expected to form a key component of any robust digital transformation strategy.
And according to Oluwole Abegunde, a telecommunications research analyst at IDC West Africa, cost-optimisation efforts and a lack of skills would drive demand for security services in the years ahead, while the proliferation of IoT technologies would push concerns around privacy and physical security to the top of the ICT agenda.
“The adoption of IoT will accelerate the rate of digital transformation in Nigeria as organisations and stakeholders seek actionable insights from the high volumes of data that will inevitably be generated by the proliferation of connected ‘things’ such as mobile devices, wearables, and sensors,” said Abegunde.
“These insights will transform the way businesses and government organisations interact with customers, citizens, suppliers, and even employees, helping them to become more agile and innovative than they could have previously imagined” he said.
