KEY POINTS

• Poor infrastructure and high costs are preventing 120 million Nigerians from accessing the internet.
• The lack of affordable internet affects socio-economic development, particularly in rural areas.
• Telecom industry leaders call for investments in infrastructure to bridge the digital divide.

According to the survey, about 120 million Nigerians cannot go online because of the lack of infrastructure and high prices, which means that a large part of society remains outside the digital world.

The problem of expensive and unavailable internet connection is most acute in rural areas where the development of infrastructure is less advanced than in cities. This digital divide still hinders the socio-economic development of millions of people in Nigeria restricting their right to information, education as well as other opportunities of making a living.

Physical and financial constraints to internet connectivity

However, Nigeria still has significant challenges in the way of extending internet connectivity to everyone in the country even as the country’s digital economy grows. This has been attributed to high costs associated with infrastructure development especially in the rural areas where the operators have little incentive to lay down fiber optics.

Also, the expensive prices of smart phones and other devices make it worse because most Nigerians do not have the devices they require to access the internet.

BusinessDay has quoted the global body for telecom operators, GSMA, as saying that infrastructure costs are among the factors that have kept internet usage low in Nigeria. While Nigeria has one of the largest telecom markets in Africa, the expense of constructing and maintaining networks throughout the extensive country is expensive, especially in the less populated regions.

Socio economic development consequence

The facts that 120 million Nigerians are excluded from the digital society present very significant impacts on the nation’s socio-economic development. This limits access to the online classes or to the online health services or to other options like marketing or selling that is vital in the current economy.

This is because in many of these areas, people living in rural areas have very little access to services and opportunities than their fellow citizens from urban areas due to lack of connection.

With the ever increasing importance of digital services in the economy, analysts have noted that the exclusion of such a significant population will limit Nigeria’s potential for economic growth.

Make a call for investments in infrastructure

To this end, the heads of the telecom industry have urged governments to pump more capital into infrastructure to extend the Internet connectivity and lower the costs.

Through upgrading broadband connectivity the government and private entities should make efforts to provide further accessibility and affordable Internet connections to all, and especially in the rural areas.

The government has already recognized the need to close the digital divide, but much more needs to be done to make cheap internet a reality for everyone in Nigeria.

Included in this paper’s findings are specific recommendations that the Nigerian government must undertake in order to upgrade its digital ecosystem as well as the steps Nigeria must make toward bridging the internet access divide in Africa and thus promote digital inclusion for economic development.