Saraki met with a delegation of the US Chamber of Commerce African Business Working Group on ICT.

In his speech, while addressing the group. The Senate President said in furtherance of our commitment at the 8th Senate to create more jobs and opportunities for young Nigerians, the US Chamber of Commerce and my Office have set up this working group, which comprises of representatives from some of the biggest ICT companies in the world like Microsoft, Oracle and IBM, to look at ways of building a more robust digital economy for Nigeria.

Many of you will recall that in 2016, following my meeting with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), we came up with priority pieces of legislation that were aimed at restructuring Nigeria’s economy by improving the Ease of Doing Business in the country.

Now, in collaboration with this ICT Working Group, we hope to do something similar by identifying the policies and pieces of legislation around broadband technology, taxation, and infrastructure that have been limiting Nigeria’s growth in the ICT sector.

Once we receive the report from this working group — which shall serve as a roadmap for our legislative work on these issues — the 8th Senate will immediately get to work to ensure that Nigeria’s technology sector helps to propel our economic diversification agenda.

The group was led by Ms. Leila Ndiaye.