Danbatta Tasks African ICT Firms On Huge Data, AI Opportunities

The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta, has challenged African ICT companies to take advantage of the unprecedented quantities of data, now being generated on sentiment, behaviour, human health, commerce, communications and migration to position itself.

Danbatta who made the call while a delivery a keynote address at the virtual Digital Africa Conference and Exhibition 2021, said that “Adoption of AI solutions is expected to increase tremendously in the next few years and competition among major AI companies is expected to be intense.”

According to him, in a recently published report by Markets and Markets (M&M), the global AI market size is projected to grow from $58.3 billion in 2021 to $309.6 billion by 2026, it is a compound of enormous growth rate of 39.7 per cent during the forecast period.

He explained that BlockChain is the foundation for crypto currency such as bitcoin; one of the newest technologies that has received extensive global attention in recent times.

BlockChain serves as an immutable measure which allows transactions take place in addition to a live manner. BlockChain based applications are springing up, covering numerous fields including financial services, refutation systems, Internet of Things (IoT), health and so on.

Danbatta made reference to the ‘Emergent Research’, a research consulting firm forecast on small businesses, projected that the global BlockChain market of $180.7 million d in 2019 is anticipated to reach $1.12 billion by the year 2027.

He added that it is a compound growth rate of 25 per cent saying that one major implication of this revelation is that a robust and reliable broadband infrastructure and advanced technology, such as the 5th Generation Network (5G), are required to unleash the huge economic potentials of AI and BlockChain in every country.

Danbatta stated that Africa, and indeed Nigeria, must be positioned to take advantage of this huge revenue in AI technologies, BlockChain especially, in the next five years to enable a digital economy.