Danbatta: Africa must deploy infrastructure, enhance cybersecurity to bridge digital divide

Garba Danbatta, executive vice-chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), says Africa must deploy infrastructure and enhance cybersecurity to bridge the digital divide.

The vice-chairman spoke on Thursday at the opening of the Africa internet governance forum in Abuja.

The theme of the event is: ‘Transforming Africa’s digital landscape: empowering inclusion, security, and innovation’.

Danbatta said a chunk of the African population is not connected to the internet, especially when compared to the rest of the world.

He said in order to bridge the digital divide and ensure that internet is accessible to people in rural areas in Africa, countries must deploy infrastructure.

“Africa would do well to deploy infrastructure and this deployment should be ubiquitous if at all we’re going to have a nature of inclusiveness in the way and manner the internet is going to reach people, not only in the major cities and underserved areas of the continent,” he said.

“Out of the 25 least contented countries in the world, 21 are from Africa. Look at the level of internet penetration, the global penetration average is about 62.5 percent, Africa’s figure is 50 percent.

“So our people are really not connected. I think the central issue that must be paced in order to address the problem is to deploy infrastructure.”

Asked about cybersecurity for telecommunications in Nigeria, the executive vice-chairman said the NCC has a computer incidence response team, which daily provides advisory on how telecommunication companies can take measures to protect themselves from malicious attacks within the cyber space.

“We even grade the nature of the attacks into you know, malicious, light, heavy and so on. This is going on as we speak,” he said.

“We are involved, therefore, in the three categories of the main theme of the IGF — inclusion, security, and innovation.

“I think the next step to take is to ensure we raise the bar in the area of inclusion, in the area of enhanced security of our services, as well as in the area of innovation. This we promise we are going to do.”

‘ACCESS TO POWER NEEDED TO BRIDGE DIGITAL DIVIDE’

Also speaking, Samuel George, a member of the Ghanaian parliament and the secretary-general of the African parliamentary network on internet governance, said national governments need to start looking at power as a critical part of bridging the digital divide in underserved and unserved areas.

“When you don’t have the national grid running electricity to a community, even if you carry bandwidth connectivity there, the persons there cannot power up devices to use the internet,” he said.

“Also, depending on the cost of electricity, if they need to use a generator, it increases the cost of accessing the internet.

“Accessibility must be looked at from the angle of affordability.

“Most times, governments look at the spending power of their central cities and use that to assume the spending power of people in rural communities.

“What people in the urban areas spend on accessing the internet is a monthly goods cost for people in rural areas.

“So we need to look at how we can carry electricity to these communities at a low price.”