‘Only mandatory adoption of local software can save $400m yearly capital flights’
Leading stakeholders’ in Nigeria’s ICT has decried the annual $400m capital flights bleeding away from the ailing economy on accounts of yearly licence renewal for foreign software without recourse to indigenous software that could perform the exact task.
Reviewing the poor performance of the sub sector at a recent roundtable on the use of Nigerian software in the financial sector, experts argued that the craze for foreign software has out crowded talented Nigerian startups in software development.
According to them, the best bet for the revival and sustainable advancement of indigenous software industry is to use regulatory instrument to enforce the adoption of indigenous software across financial institutions and other sectors of the economy.
Expressing total support for the enforcement, the Director General of NOTAP, Dr. Dan-Azumi Mohammed Ibrahim, said government must come up with workable policies that must be implemented, recalling that his agency had more than 10 years ago, collaborated with the World Intellectual Property (WIPO), Central Bank of Nigeria and other stakeholders, to develop the Local Vendor Policy in 2007. The target of the policy amongst others is to strategically engage local ICT firms on the implementation of foreign software agreements in Nigeria.
