BY EMEKA AGINAM

At the just concluded Association of Telecommunication Companies of Nigeria, ATCON, Telecom Executives and Regulator’s forum held in Lagos, the Chief Executive Officer of the Computer Warehouse Group, Austin Okere advocated appropriate local content policy in the telecoms industry.

Okere who spoke at the local Content Panel during the forum said that, “we should not confuse local content with taking businesses from foreign investors and handing them over to locals without recourse to technical ability and financial capability within the value chain.”

He added that:”Many of the local Code Divisional Multiple Access, CDMA, operators are finding it increasingly difficult to sustain the heavy investments needed to make their networks viable, and are losing subscribers at an alarming rate, threatening their very existence.”

According to him, local entrepreneurs would benefit more in the value chain by taking advantage of the communication infrastructure to launch  unrealizable business models as have been demonstrated by Jumia, Konga, and CWG , companies he said took advantage of the pervasive broadband infrastructure in the country to launch a cloud-based subscription business providing technology to SMEs tagged CWG 2.0.

Okere gave examples of how local companies such as Alibaba in China have taken this initiative to create businesses much bigger than the telecoms ‘plumbing providers’.

“Local content should not be about targeting a bigger share of the small cake, but rather baking a much bigger cake that can go round everybody, with people paying in the areas of their greatest strengths”, Okere added.