From Cyriacus Nnaji, Lagos
Director-General/CEO, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has stated that Big data analytics market is set to reach $103 billion by 2023.
Kashifu made the revelation at the Nigerian Information Technology Reporters Association (NITRA) Tech Forum at CitiHeight Hotel, Ikeja on Thursday, May 27, 2021.
Speaking on what he titled ‘How to Achieve 30% Local Cloud Hosting by 2024, Kashifu said “The big data analytics market is set to reach $103 billion by 2023.”
Speaking further, Kashifu said “In 2019, the big data market grew by 20%. In 2020, every person-generated 1.7 megabytes in just a second and Internet users generate about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day. Organizations are investing in data and its management.
Represented by Chioma Aguguo, Kashifu said that data is a major factor of production but for data to be a source of wealth, it needs to be secured, not only its security but also its sovereignty.
He added that though cloud computing offers other services such as Infrastructure as a service, he said Cloud hosting provides the opportunities for 100% resource utilization as resources are evenly distributed over several server and cost control due to elasticity of services where pricing depends on services consumption where one is in 100% control.
Kashifu also said that being aware of the duties of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) mandate which is to regulate and develop the IT sector of Nigeria, an integral part of the economy, central to this mandate is securing data both cooperate and individual.
“I am glad to inform you that NITDA has initiated several policies and programs to ensuring data sovereignty and integrity. We introduced the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation in 2019. The successes of the regulations are there for all to see. Also, we developed the Nigeria Cloud Computing Policy (NCCP) to promote “Cloud First” as a proposition to Federal Public Institutions (FPIs) and SMEs as an efficient way of acquiring and deploying computing resources for better and improved quality of digital services.”
He said the role of the Government is to enable the environment for private and corporate bodies to invest in local hosting services, the building of more data centres. “There has been a considerable increase in the number of cloud services providers in Nigeria,” he stated.
He applauded NITRA for the tech forum saying “NITDA applauds the initiative of NITRA for organizing this Technology Forum. We are happy to be part of this year’s edition. We expect more of this kind of activities and we are always willing to collaborate with stakeholders, we are always willing to work with stakeholders to address their pain point to make sure we create enabling environment for cloud services to thrive in Nigeria.”
