Nigeria Accounts For 0.36% Of $520b ICT Market

With a traded value of $1.8 billion on importation of ICT goods and electronics in 2014, Nigeria accounts for 0.36 per cent of global transaction in such goods as the global industry continues to experience a downturn, latest report UNCTAD Technology and Innovation Report has stated.

According to the report, African governments can better implement science, technology and innovation policies, and coordinates them with industrial policies and industrial development plans.

The report found that, mainly because of difficulties in coordinating those two policy frameworks, African countries that spend more on research and development as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) do not manage to export more high- and medium-technology products.

Similarly, the report showed that global imports of information and communications technology (ICT) goods grew by only one per cent in 2014, the latest year for which figures are available, the lowest rate of growth compared to the preceding five years.

“Developing countries, and those countries changing from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, accounted for more than half (57 per cent) of total global imports, which reached a value of $2.1 trillion. Global imports of communications equipment and electronic components were the only two subsectors which grew slightly in 2014 – up three per cent and two per cent respectively – as compared to the previous year.

“Among the Top 10 importers of ICT goods, China and Singapore were the only economies with declining rates in 2014, down four per cent and two per cent respectively. By contrast, imports grew strongly into the Republic of Korea (up 11 per cent), Hong Kong, China (up nine per cent) and Germany (up eight per cent). On the export side, there was zero growth for ICT goods from China, but Taiwan Province of China and Hong Kong, China maintained positive and significant growth rates”, the report added.

The report shows that patterns of policy conceptualisation, design, planning and implementation are critical to the success of companies and hold the key to making technology work for business.

According to UNCTAD, recent studies have shown that it is not enough to just have a policy emphasis on technology-led growth; instead, the success of policies depends on how policy processes work to facilitate collaboration and cooperation between policy agencies, companies, businesses and research.