FG plans tax incentives, funds to boost employment in ICT industry

According to various media reports, the Federal Government is set to introduce incentive packages for start-up companies in the Information Communication and Technology (ICT) Industry so that they can help Government hit its three million jobs target by 2018.

The incentives would range from tax holidays to ICT Innovation funds and ICT Incubation schemes to drive the sectors growth, according to a Nigeria CommunicationsWeek report.

Mr. Adebayo Shittu, minister of Communication, and Afolabi Imoukhuede, senior special assistant to the President on Job Creation/Youth Employment, revealed this during the visit of the Minister to the Yaba Technology Ecosystem Hubs in Lagos, recently.

Speaking after accessing institutions like the Co-Creation Hub, iDeaHub, among others, the Minister expressed satisfaction with the infrastructure, saying, “We want to replicate what is happening here in other parts of the country in partnership with key stakeholders. We are going to start in Ibadan and Katsina state in the next three months as both the Governors have agreed to provide facilities for the establishment of these hubs“.

He disclosed the Buhari administration's plans on focusing on the ICT sector of the economy to drive all-encompassing economic growth.

“As you all know, the ICT innovations is powering economies across the globe, creating employments and wealth. It is impacting on the way we live and the way we do businesses; the Buhari administration is at the forefront of diversifying our economy, Government is resolved to develop the ICT sector through Local Content initiative. Government will continually support Yaba and all ICT hubs across the country because it is a veritable platform to achieve our ICT objectives,” Shittu said.

“We believe with these incentives, the sector will witness tremendous growth and generating employment and massive wealth for our people. We are also going to monitor the hubs across Nigeria in order to ensure standards and to mold them for global competitiveness. Our aim is to make Nigeria the ICT hub for Africa,” he added.

He asked entrepreneurs in the sector to list some of the challenges they face and the sort of intervention they want from the Government to in sustain the existing hubs.

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Imoukhuede added that the Government will consider tax holidays and rebates for qualifying tech start-ups so that they can employ more people and grow the entrepreneurial sector of the economy.

“We are working on the details to ensure that we get it right. We have a million jobs to be created this year and we have a target to create three million jobs over the next three years-2016-19. What is keen for me as the SSA on Job Creation is for us to be able to look at which sectors we can create jobs, and ICT, for us is a key area for job creations.

“For two reasons- you can create jobs within the sector, and you can use ICT as an enabler to also create a lot of jobs. That is why we are focusing on ICT and the digital world for jobs creation; it is therefore important that we visit places like Co-Creation, where you can achieve an organic growth,” he said.

Bosun Tijani, CEO, Co-Creation Hub, in his presentation on ‘The Yaba Technology Ecosystem –How we got here and where we ‘d like to go,’ said there is no nation on earth today that can prosper without using technology. The Cc-Hub boss said that beyond the incentives, the government should patronize the companies in the sector by giving them business.

“For instance in the last election, we built a website that was used to encourage people on how to vote, when to vote ; we also built another site for ID cards registration- it was so good that INEC adopted it. Somebody paid for that work; that is the kind of collaborations we want. 60 percent of what we do here is building other people's businesses by using our creativity and knowhow to make society better,” he said.

CcHub was founded in 2010 and is an enterprise committed to bringing together stakeholders to collaborate on solutions to social challenges faced by the Nigerian populace. It is headquartered in Lagos.