By Meletus EZE
Information Technology (IT) expert, Sunday Folayan, has called for the establishment of an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Development Bank in the country.
Folayan, the Co-founder of the Nigerian Network Operators Group (ngNOG), made the call in Lagos on Saturday.
The ngNOG is a forum dedicated to promoting the exchange of technical information as well as cooperation and coordination among network service providers.
Folayan said that there was the need for an ICT Development Bank that would nurture and specifically care for the country’s nascent IT industry.
He said that such bank was necessary because of the importance of ICT for the nation’s socio-economic development.
According to him, commercial banks don’t understand IT, in terms of investment, as they are always talking about collateral and valuation of the IT companies.
”We need a specialist bank that understands IT and can invest in IT. Commercial banks don’t understand agriculture, that is why we have the Bank of Agriculture.
”Commercial banks don’t understand industry, that is why we have the Bank of Industry (BoI).
”So we need a bank of ICT that will specially understand IT and be able to fund ICT development in the country.
”We need a bank for IT that will collect less that 10 per cent interest, in order to be able to position IT in the country,” he said.
Folayan said that ICT development had not taken its place in the nation as it had not been fully utilised.
According to him, ICT Development Bank will enable the acceleration of ICT development in the country.
”There are pockets of ICT usage but it is not synchronised. We need to use ICT in full, not partially and we have the population to synchronise ICT,” he said.
