By Ojoma Akor
The Federal Government of Nigeria and industry stakeholders have called for collective efforts to ensure the effective implementation of the Local Vendor Policy (LVP) and to boost indigenous ICT capacity in the country.
They made the call on Tuesday during a high-level stakeholder workshop organized by the National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP) in collaboration with Results for Development (R4D) in Abuja.
The workshop was themed ‘From Policy to Practice: Building Indigenous ICT Capacity Through the Local Vendor Policy.’ The engagement was supported through the Sankore Helpdesk.
NOTAP introduced Nigeria’s Local Vendor Policy (LVP) to strengthen indigenous capacity within the country’s ICT ecosystem. The policy requires that Nigerian ICT companies participate in the implementation, maintenance, and support of foreign software deployed in Nigeria, thereby enabling knowledge transfer, local skill development, and growth of domestic software capabilities.
Minister of Innovation, Science, and Technology, Dr. Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh, said all hands must be on deck because a lot of time has been wasted, and that countries with only half of Nigeria’s capacity are blazing the trail.
He said, ” So I think it is never too late to do the right thing, and it’s never too late to start at this point, but the call to action is that all hands must be on deck. We are grateful for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is always at the forefront with foresight, and we are following behind.”
Represented by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Philip Ndiomu Ebiogeh, he assured that the Federal Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Technology is committed to supporting the program to ensure its success.
He said the benefits of strengthening the country’s ICT ecosystem include tackling unemployment and boosting wealth creation.
He said, “If we get it right, unemployment will be significantly reduced because many people will have access to jobs. Beyond job creation, we are also looking at wealth creation across the country.”
Udeh said that it would also rapidly address security issues and help tackle rural-urban migration.
The Director-General of the NOTAP, Dr. Obiageli Amadiobi, said that although the policy had existed for several years, it had yet to be fully implemented, necessitating renewed engagement with stakeholders.
She said, “This is the first outcome of several efforts to bring stakeholders together on this issue. The Local Vendor Policy has been in existence for years, but we know that for one reason or another, it has not been fully implemented.”
She said the workshop was convened to review the policy’s progress and accelerate its implementation, adding that it was deliberately structured to involve key players in the ICT ecosystem, including local vendors, OEMs, and industry influencers, to ensure meaningful discussions that would lead to practical outcomes.
“We made selections of key stakeholders so that at the end of the day, we can say that we have actually established this policy for full implementation. We are looking at the guidelines already in place and the policy document itself to see how we can improve on it so that it benefits both the industry and the country,” Amadiobi said.
Senior Program Officer at Results for Development (R4D), Umar Kabo Idris, said the Sankore program is funded by the UK government’s Foreign Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO), and that it aims to strengthen Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI).
He said, ” It aims to strengthen research commercialization, innovation policy, and support innovation system projects that align with national and regional priorities for science, technology, and innovation in Ghana and Nigeria through collaboration with both country STI ministries and their key agencies and departments.”
While saying that the program is implemented by Results for Development (R4D) and UNESCO in collaboration with both country STI ministers and their relevant agencies and departments, he added that Sankore’s key objectives include:
– Support the UK government’s partnership with the governments in Ghana and Nigeria on science, technology, and innovation.
– Improve the innovation and/or technology policy and regulatory environment and
-Strengthen government digital delivery services in Nigeria and Ghana
-Develop a demand-responsive helpdesk to support technology and innovation systems strengthening projects.
Idris highlighted that the Local Vendor Policy has been in place for about a decade and is now due for a comprehensive review.
He also said the Sankore program supported the workshop through collaboration to ensure that “we collectively assess and evaluate the National Vendor Policy after a decade of implementation.”
He said, “This policy has existed for the last 10 years. A decade is a long time, and many things have changed. It is therefore important to assess the progress made and identify areas that require improvement.”
Idris added that the workshop provided an opportunity to bring the entire innovation ecosystem together to evaluate the policy and chart a stronger path forward.
He said, “We believe this is a great opportunity to bring stakeholders together to assess how the policy has performed over the past decade and how it can be improved to better support Nigeria’s innovation system.
“So our aim, in addition to supporting the entire science, technology, and innovation policy and environment, is to work with the larger science, technology, and innovation ecosystem, which includes academia. We’re talking about research institutions, universities, innovators, themselves, the government, and the entire ecosystem. We have been doing that for the last year, and I think this is a great opportunity to bring the ecosystem together, to look at the policy that has been developed over the last 10 years, to see how it can actually be improved.”
