 The World Bank has advised Nigeria and other African countries to focus on digital development as too many of Africa's expanding youth population will be denied the opportunity to leave up to their potential with the current incremental pace of economic and social advancement. This was contained in a new report by the Washington-based Bank titled The Digital Economy for Africa Initiative. Now, digital technologies offer an opportunity to unlock new pathways for rapid economic growth, innovation, job creation and access to services that would have been unimaginable only a decade ago. And that's our focus on the show for today. Welcome to Business Insights and Plus TV Africa. I am Justin Acadone. Aviation fuel crisis as well as scarcity of PMS in Abuja were just some issues which made headlines this week here are all the highlights. NNPC has insisted that it will not fix the price for aviation fuel but asks airline operators to request import liensons for the fuel. This was disclosed by the Corporations Group Managing Director Mele Kiari in a statement issued by the House of Representatives. According to him, aviation fuel cannot have a fixed price because it is a deregulated product. NNPC has revealed that the recent fuel queues in Abuja is likely caused by low loadout at Depor which usually happens during long public holidays. The NNPC disclosed this while reacting to reappearing fuel queues in Abuja. The corporation added that it is working with its marketing partners to take necessary measures to ramp up loadout from all Depor. The total net credit by the Nigerian banking sector to the government rose by 2.2 trillion Naira and the first quarter ended March 2022 to 16.32 trillion Naira. This is according to figures obtained from the central bank of Nigeria's data on money and credit statistics. According to the data, the net credit to the government rose from 14.12 trillion Naira as of the end of January 2022 to 14.72 trillion Naira as of the end of February 2022. The figures show that this was an increase from the first quarter figure of 2021. The Nigerian Communications Commission NNCC and the Federal Inland Revenue Service FIRS have taken their collaboration in not further. This time it is by setting up a joint committee of senior and management staff of the two agencies towards the implementation of inter-agency strategies for enhancing national revenues in the telecommunications sector. The NNCC's Executive Commissioner, State Management Adelike Adewolu, inaugurated a 17-member committee on behalf of the Commission's Executive Vice-Chairman Professor Umar Dambata and Executive Chairman of the FIRS, Mohamed Nami. Welcome back. Those were the stories that made headlines for this week. Now according to the World Bank, report access to the internet however remains out of reach for most people in the continent with only 22% reporting halvin access as of 2017 that is. It also noted that few governments were investing strategically and systematically in developing digital infrastructure, services, skills and entrepreneurship. Now Bukala Ulutaya is the CEO of Stellis Digital Bank. He now joins me to discuss the Nigeria's digital economy with a focus on how these challenges can be channeled into growth. Many thanks for joining us Bukala on this particular show. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah it is worrisome that the World Bank has released that particular report and Nigeria is amongst the countries in Africa with a weak digital economy. Where would you say we have that particular challenge? Everything about digital economy seems to be where the world is going to or facing right now and it seems to have taken over most industries and that seems to be what is sustaining the developed world economy in the light of the fact that the oil is not doing well and so many industries are not doing well. Don't forget that people are moving from oil now to green energy which is solar. So many of the traditional industries where most country and their income from is already going down and digital economy seems to be replacing most of them and that is where they are getting most of their income from and the irony is that Africa started very late however Nigeria is growing but we started very late extremely late in the sense that if you look at the internet penetration in most of this country for instance in America is 100 percent what it means is that every citizen in in America has access to internet but however in Nigeria we are agreeing according to Statista.com they predicted that Nigeria is at 51% internet penetration. That's about over half of the population. Yeah over half of the population. Don't forget I think you mentioned that workman said it was 22 before however we've grown we are growing so it but there is still a lot of gap to fuel if the likes of America is already at 100% Singapore and Malaysia that was once a developing country is not 98.5% of internet penetration so you you will see that Nigeria still has a lot of play as a long way to to cover and it's not only that internet penetration falls on that infrastructure there's a lot of things that even come up that you know if you look at the ranking compared to most of the developed world that let you know that Nigeria is actually falling behind there's also digital competitiveness which also means the ability for every country to identify a new technology and be able to you know implement or adopt it both in the private sector and also in the government institution. We found out that Nigeria is not even among the first 200 countries that were around. Why are we not? Because we we we found that Nigeria is slow to developing or embracing new technologies that's that's the reason so for instance a new technology comes up now okay we say okay blockchain for instance and we found out that blockchain is helping a lot of companies to be able to do good things great things Nigeria is usually slow is it that we don't have the capacity as a nation or the skill we don't have the personnel the IT skills of of the individual that will be able to do this or maybe we just haven't come to the realization you just talked about blockchain for instance what would have thought that time it's something the government would have just that you know just rode on completely but now we have issues of regulation when issues like a blockchain cryptocurrency you know is talked about yeah let me let me buttress that we have four major issues that is confronting us as a nation that is really affecting our digital competitiveness one of it is infrastructure as I said before the infrastructure is the ability for the country to be able to have access to internet the problem you actually said why are we stuck to just the telecommunication providing the the internet there are some big giants in America today that if they come into Nigeria they and they can provide internet access to almost everybody in Nigeria why is it difficult for those people to come the likes of google provide internet you know and many other big family that provide internet access to to their citizen again we talked about the digital competitiveness we are far from it secondly is also the skill the training we found that in Nigeria and even in our curriculum today even in the universities people will go to school to even study computer science and not start the entrepreneurship aspect of the digital the digital aspect now if you look at the top three companies in America we have Walmart we have amazon and we have apple amazon amazon and apple is basically a tech company and amazon revenue is about 300 billion dollars apple is about 200 billion we also have google about 120 billion microsoft 120 billion imagine what those country are actually you know giving back to the economy in terms of maybe tax in terms of employment you know that the number of people that they are employing so again in in in our in our economy we don't even have a proper system a curriculum where people are being trained on digital on digital skills where we are not going to have many people now coming into the entrepreneurship aspect of it let me tell you apple was not founded by the government amazon was not founded by the government google was not founded by the government microsoft was not founded by they were founded by by entrepreneurs just entrepreneurs and see what those companies have become why couldn't we emulate such we found that even now that we are beginning to have some people going into we have fintech entrepreneurs we have some startup there is still a little bit of the acceptability is still very low government is still skeptical another major issue is also funding there is no alternative platform for where these people can get funds from the only funding that we have did we find out that most of this tech startup they run to foreign vcs venture capital or individuals to provide capital why because there is no we don't need to go to overseas or foreign and to get funds what is stopping the local investors from investing in the tech startup today one of the issue is that there is still a lot of you know apathy on the side of the government a lot of people will not put their funds in in an institution that government is not supporting or maybe the go the institute or the or the company is not in a stock exchange you know when the company is in a stock exchange they believe that okay the company is now probably have a proper governing structure many people don't want to put their funds in a company that they don't understand the structure maybe it's a private structure or the governance is not that okay but most tech startup cannot go to the to the to the stock market now because of the compliance cost do we have alternative platform where these people can go to to fund do we have even vcs in a venture capital firm in Nigeria that are putting funds making funds available for this tech startup most of this tech startup will become the likes of gogo in the future okay you understand so these are some of the challenges that Nigeria is facing that is actually seriously affecting the growth of the the digital economy in Nigeria all right fine rightly put you talked about governments and apathy and all of that but let's talk about individuals and acceptability when it comes to products you know that come out of this digital economy for instance you are in the financial world you know there's a whole lot of talk about fintechs financial services and all of that with innovation and products are coming up by the day how would you say Nigerians have accepted to what extent have they accepted this new product for instance in the financial sector yet Nigeria is the there's a lot of acceptance that now has to do with penetration rate the penetration rate in Nigeria the penetration rate in Nigeria is actually growing people are accepting because we found out that these days that that is especially the youth they know that is the next oil company many youths will rather not go into a fintech a fintech or a tech company to go even without you know a big or fat salary because they know the potential rather than going to other company rather than going to maybe the other traditional company so in Nigeria there is a lot of acceptability among the youth especially so people are accepting and they know that okay this is the new way to go and there are a lot of you know things that needs to come up and one of the when I was talking about the issues that Nigeria is actually facing and one major one that I didn't mention is also regulation so regulation is one of the things that will also help to increase the acceptability now when I talk about regulation is not about putting down laws that we control or that will force out to everybody on a particular line I'm talking about a system whereby the the industry we build deregulated what I mean by deregulating is that Nigeria economy it and it's a it's a fallout from the fact that we've been in the military regime for so long Nigeria economy is almost used to a monopoly system we will say that okay one company should only be is the switching firm so the switching company one only one company should only be these should be that where the government also have maybe some some amount of shares or interest or investment in I think that is actually you know affected that's reduced the growth slowed us down to a long to a lot so the the the regulators need to be able to give more people license to be able to do these things especially the people who have the knowledge and is then they are able to bring in new technology and regulation also talks about is also talking about the accessibility of the government to new technologies innovation and ideas at the government willing to accept the new innovation and ideas that are coming I was quite excited this week when I heard that in my own industry that the CBN were able to were able to give one of our partners license to become a switching company a switching company when you want to transfer do interbank transfer it used to be names it used to it used to be names and the only one we have after names is maybe inter switch another so we now have more people coming in and this firm is actually piling into a blockchain and one advantage they're bringing in is the fact that in those days you don't you know the banks don't get to get the funds maybe you transfer money to a particular bank the bank don't get the funds immediately they get to get maybe one day or two days after and then leads to maybe some reconciliation issue and all that and then there's the firm that says that no when anybody transfers to any bank you get your funds immediately and then before maybe bank a has to take up the risk of bank b because bank a is already recording that oh customer a so customer maybe customer justin has received the fund into his account electronically but have not received the physical cash but you can move your money you understand which means the bank is typically the one funding it until my own money comes from bank b which means i'm taking a risk what about if the money does not come so we have firms that have that technical or you know that technical expertise to be able to solve all this you know issue because one of the advantage of technology or going digital is the fact that people are going to have better experience there's going to be speed in processing transaction in fact for the country the country there's going to be what i call diversification because the there are more businesses that we're also going to spring up in the fact that if you have if the country is fully digitized and you have this digital economy is growing more business are going to spring up and then from the more business that is springing up people will be employed so there's a whole lot of advantage there's a whole lot of good things that Nigeria can actually benefit if the government decides to focus and provide enabling environment for the digital economy to grow right so as it is now you talked about them 51 percent penetration in terms of internet and then connectivity in Nigeria but let's look at the next them five years the short term specifically in Nigeria where do you see the digital economy going and what more do we need to make Nigeria like a hub there is definitely positive there's definitely a positive projection because if you look at it we are not 51 percent penetration five years ago we were in here but we are saying that we are starting slow so if you are starting slow it means that the government probably needs to do more than what other countries are doing if we compare what other countries are spending into their digital economy to expand it I'm sure Nigeria is no cannot even be compared at all now we're talking about us is already at 100 percent let's assume we are even using us okay let's even use let's say okay let's assume us is far developed okay let's use Malaysia let's use Singapore these countries were once developing countries they are 98.5 percent penetration if we say we want to match them today what do we do it means that the government need to you know invest a lot in that area and for you to invest we need to be able to have people that will tell the government that okay you are investing into this economy but in the next one or two years we are going to be you know reaping the dividend so for us to be able to reach where those people are then we need massive investment we need foreign investment foreign partners to come in so 51 percent penetration and we want 100 percent it means that we want everybody to have access to internet then there has to be a massive investment in infrastructure okay just before we go on the final notes now you know there are countries that have moved towards you know accepting blockchain cryptocurrency as you know legal tender and all of that do you see Nigeria get into that space and then if you do when how soon can we get there with all of the regulations that we really have going on around us right now as I said before the I think the government needs to sit down with the regulators with the regulators already Nigeria is already feeling the impact of the digital economy as at 2001 quarter two the digital economy contributed 17.92 to the GDP of Nigeria which is the highest and we are saying we've not even done enough and we are in a situation whereby all is not contributing as much as it used to so what do we do we need to look for you know we need to look for alternatives so right now we need to be able to sit down with the regulator and say come we see potential in this area we see a situation whereby the digital economy is going to be contributing almost 40 percent to the GDP of of the country but how is this going to happen we need a situation whereby the regulators will be able to allow these these ideas to flow now we have a situation whereby people are coming up with cryptocurrency and all that yes there is some downside technology also has its own downside the truth it has its own disadvantage and we need to now look at what are the disadvantages of this someone once said I think it's the vice president that said that you don't throw away the baby with the bathwater with the bathwater what do we need to do sit down and look at how can we now you know control the bad or the negative aspect of this Nigeria needs it critically in order for us to be able to improve our technology let's look at the good side and let's look at how we are going to deal with the other side of it so we need to sit down with the regulator if we are unable to do that it will always come back to a situation whereby the regulators are throwing away the baby with the bathwater and then Nigeria will not be able to benefit or grow in that aspect of it yes the cryptocurrency has its own disadvantage but it has its own advantage digital technology digital banking digital media affiliate marketing social media they all have his own advantage they all have his own advantage one major advantage to the government is that the government can even increase is its earning if you are able to you know be able to bring all these people together and be able to monitor to know the amount of money that is going into this this area so what would the government just need to do is for us to be able to provide robust um robust governors robust uh regulations to be able to you know allow you know take away the bath side and allow the other side of these things to grow all right and then to the benefit of the country all right thank you so much indeed we have been speaking with Bokola Olutayo he is the CEO of Stellar's digital bank thank you so much for joining us on the show yeah welcome all right as we go we'll leave you with this one the senate through its committee on power has questioned the ministry of power and per status under its purview about the reason for the incessant greed collapse in the country now chairman of the committee on power senator gabriel susram expressed disappointment over the inadequacy of the ministry to address the occurrence or details in this next report i am justin akadone i'll see you again next time the national greed has collapsed for the third time since the year began the latest the ministry said was caused by vandalism on the transmission tower on the odukpani ecotecpene 330 kv double circuit transmission line leading to a loss of about 400 megawatts of generation the instability of the greed has led to epileptic power supply leaving parts of the country itself including abuja and leaguers without power uh odukpani was shot down in the same as a result of the same problem which caused a loss of five hundred and seventy five the total of that is four thousand six hundred and sixty five well it then means that what is there and we're trying to do is to say that they are not the cause of the system collapse i'm really finding it difficult to to fight to see or to hear that we have so many greed failures over a period of some years now and yet as policy makers you didn't sit down to articulate a position that would address these issues delegations from the ministry speak if all of a sudden for instance there has been a storm weather and you know an appreciable quantum of power is lost due to massive feeder tripping feeder tripping when in your home you no longer have supply just because it is straight into rain this can create another problem and when this happens the frequency will rise and will have instability issue first problem on the grid or one of the problem vandalization and we are we are putting in place a new technology driven surveillance we have in fact actually we have a pilot phase just to start from uh lukujah to uh abodja to lukujah uh 330 kv that's practical actions on what we are doing the power ministry said the outage had occurred overnight as a result of vandalism it gave no estimate of when the grid which says around 117 million people will be back in full operation