The West Africa Telecommunications Regulators Meeting (WATRA) has the digital economic system presently contributes round $30 billion yearly to the area’s Gross Home Product (GDP).
WATRA’s Government Secretary Mr Aliyu Aboki who disclosed this throughout a digital press convention on the weekend additionally stated the West African telecommunications market is now valued at $63.17 billion with over 400 million cell subscribers.
Nonetheless, Aboki stated WATRS is engaged on initiatives to facilitate infrastructure sharing amongst West African international locations to decrease the price of web for telecom subscribers throughout the area.
In accordance with him, infrastructure akin to gateways, and knowledge centres are amenities that might be shared by international locations within the area.
Admitting that the price of web throughout West African international locations continues to be excessive, Aboki stated a decrease price of web entry would improve the digital economic system for the respective international locations within the area and enhance the consumption of knowledge by the residents, which in flip generate extra income for the telecom operators.
“We’re exploring regional initiatives to share infrastructure and scale back price. For instance, we’ve infrastructures like gateways, knowledge heart servers, and so forth. These are infrastructures that may be shared and utilized by completely different international locations with out essentially having everybody constructing the identical infrastructure.
“So, we’re collectively taking a look at these wealthy regional initiatives that allow us to share infrastructure to deliver down the price of Web finally,” the WATRA scribe stated.