FG to grow ICT incubation centres

Idlelo5: Nnenna Nwakanma, Mrs. Gordon, Mr. Ajisomo welcoming Mrs. Johnson

The federal government through the Ministry of Communications Technology is planning to grow Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) through facilitation.

Minister for Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson gave this insight at the opening session of Idlelo5 at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja on Tuesday tagged ‘Open Source Solutions for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals.’

“We hope to support and facilitate this growth of this industry through the establishment of ICT incubation centres,” she said.

Mrs. Johnson also said that these will amongst other things provide market research, testing facilities, business advisory support to translate ideas for software applications that support MDG achievement and commercial activities into a reality.

To facilitate these and other IT incubation centres, she said, there would be access to venture capital funding.

The framework, she said, is near completion and will have establishing four pilot  centres by the fourth quarter of this year.

With the passing of the Freedom of Information Act, the Ministry of Communication Technology, she said, could now aggressively pursue the provision of government data sets to software developers to work on their applications.

“I am particularly impressed with a recently launched website mybudgit.com? that takes hundreds of pages of complex Federal Government budget data and translates them into simple to understand graphics available over  the internet,” she said, stressing that she learnt  that the underlying software used to develop this application is open source.

A focus on open source solutions to achieve the MDGs, she said, would therefore not only create jobs in the ICT sector but will create wealth especially for the young population.

Remmy Nweke
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