Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture Alhaji Lai Mohammed as again underscored the importance of the nation joining other countries of the world to maximixe the importance of digitization to the nation’s economy. The Minister made this known at this year’s CABSAT event in Dubai where he spoke to select top broadcasters and experts from the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

Speaking at the event, the Minister of Information and Culture Alhaji Lai Mohammed who was represented by Ms Alheri Saido-Acting Director-General of the NBC told a gathering of media executives and professionals from the regions that Nigeria after missing the initial International Telecommunications Union Digital Switch Over deadline (DSO) was doing everything to achieve the new June 2017 date.

According to the Minister, Nigeria cannot afford to be left behind in reaping from the economic benefits of digitization especially as a leading regional Tv market. Noting that Nigeria has 20.4 million Free-to-Air (FTA) TV households, which is further estimated with digital TV penetration will reach 100% by 2020.

“One of the most interesting and important factors related to digitisation is the link to overall societal welfare. Its impact on GDP per capita reveals that an increase of 10% in a country’s digitisation score fuels a 0.75% growth in its GDP per capita. As an economic accelerant, digitisation therefore is 4.7 times more powerful than the 0.16% average impact of broadband deployment on per capita GDP” the Minister stressed.

Additionally, the economic effect of digitisation accelerates as countries move to more advanced stages of digitisation. Nigeria cannot be left out of this globally beneficial wave of change, which will definitely galvanize our economy.

The Nigeria broadcast regulatory body coordinated the country’s participation at the event and for the first time in its 22 years CABSAT played host to the participation of a sub-Saharan country as exhibiting Pavilion Partners with Nigeria through the National Broadcasting Commission hosting a pavilion of 90 square metres. CABSAT features the mainstream broadcast industry, policy makers/regulators, broadcast and production, satellite communications, equipment, content delivery, digital media, content exchange, monetization and collaboration.

The Minister said, “Nigeria currently has 2.5m digital TV homes, a number that is expected to increase dramatically to 20 million after the Digital Switch Over (DSO), making Nigeria the biggest digital TV market in Africa. Nigeria also boasts of 149 million mobile phone lines, making it one of the fastest growing mobile market in the world. Nigerian TV advertisement market is worth $200m, but with potential to grow up to $600m when we introduce our audience measurement system”. Lai Mohammed enthused. He added that the digital switch over will provide the opportunity to increase the number of channels and enrich local content, thus boosting production and employment of our youth, and contributing significantly to the nation’s GDP and diversifying the economy.

With a privilege of huge youth demography and an exponential thriving movie industry, the Information Minister said, “Nigeria intends to use DSO as an opportunity to diversify the provision of channels and content production. He added that key to this is the Nollywood, as the country’s growing movie industry is known. Nollywood employs over 1 million people, including actors, producers, directors, cameramen, publicists, etc., making it the second largest employer after Agriculture. The Nigerian film industry is worth $5.1 billion as at 2014, and Nollywood generates $600 million dollars for the Nigerian economy annually. After Hollywood and India’s Bollywood, Nollywood is the world’s third largest movie producer, at about 50 movies per week.

While addressing CABSAT Tv at the Dubai World Trade Centre, Mohammed flaunted Nigeria’s friendly investment climate and the regulatory body’s policy framework that seeks to promote healthy competition for a Broadcasting market that will witness valuable service delivery between pay and free to air (FTA) service providers as well as one that will enjoy revenue and profit growth, supported by a strong advertising market.

“The regulatory National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) will drive new TV channels and services through a Free view-type platform. At present, FTA broadcasters have been highly engaging in the DSO process, stimulating interest in launching new free to air thematic channels”. The Minister stated that the government has received over 200 expressions of interests from local and international channels which are interested in being part of the new digital TV platform in Nigeria, including BBC, CNBC and CNN.