MTN President & Group CEO Ralph Mupita and MTN Nigeria CEO Karl Toriola spoke on the necessity of the digital economy for Nigeria to thrive globally at the 14th edition of the BusinessDay CEO Forum held on the 13th of July 2023. The event, themed, “Charting a Course to Growth and Development,” was held in the Grand Ballroom in Eko Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos.
During his presentation, “Building a Digital Economy for Nigeria’s Future,” Mupita noted that Africa currently accounts for only ~1% of the global digital economy, a stark contrast to 68% in the United States, 22% in China, and 27% in Asia. This gap, he suggested, represents a significant opportunity for growth. He also outlined a blueprint for building a digital economy that could propel Nigeria to become the world’s 5th largest economy seeing that Nigeria has an untapped potential in the digital economy, with Nigeria’s Internet Gross Domestic Product (iGDP) currently at 6% with a projected double by 2050 to reach 145 billion USD.
According to him, the digital economy is the primary growth driver in both the developing and developed world because as early as 2016, the global digital economy was worth up to USD 11.5 trillion, which was 15.5% of the world’s overall GDP. Current trends suggest that the digital economy is expected to reach 25% in less than a decade, quickly outpacing the overall economy’s growth.
Concerning Nigeria and developing a thriving digital economy, Ralph Mupita said, “The good news is that Nigeria is also one of the most promising digital economies in Africa. Nigeria has a large and growing population, a young and tech-savvy workforce, and a government committed to promoting the digital economy. This, the rapid growth of the mobile phone market, the increasing availability of broadband internet, and the development of the tech start-up ecosystem all contribute to Nigeria’s digital transformation.”
Also speaking to the transformative power of digitisation, Karl Toriola, In a panel discussion titled “Navigating Digital Disruption,” said, “Digital disruption is the use of digital infrastructure tools and data to change business models, and the risk many businesses face is that if they don’t understand how to use digital technologies that are moving very fast in the world today, their businesses can get disrupted.”
The BusinessDay CEO Forum also featured insightful discussions from thought leaders like Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of African Development Bank; Alhaji Umar Namadi, Governor of Jigawa State and Osagie Okunbor, Managing Director, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited / Chairman, Shell Companies in Nigeria.
