WSIS as a catalyst for Nigeria’s ICT policy process John Dada PhD MPH, RN, Salzburg Fellow Fantsuam Foundation, Kafanchan.

Paper presented at the WTO/AITEC Conference on Implementing the WSIS Action Plan March 2004, Safari Park Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya

Nigeria’s ICT readiness and policy evolution, at the December WSIS in Geneva Tunisia 2005 as a benchmark, reduce the digital gap between Nigeria and her neighbours.

ICT Policy Process and Nigeria The Nigerian Communications Commission and the Nigerian IT Development Agency, NITDA Purposefully multi-stakeholder. ICT largely private sector driven, Lagos Computer Village Civil society for grassroots implementation

WSIS catalyst The Challenge of WSIS NCC to promote national process with a multi-stakeholder approach, To determine if/how the global priorities identified in WSIS “harmonizes” with what the Nigerian ICT policy planning process sees as important for the national context.

WSIS catalyst cotd revisit the National IT Policy document from the lens of the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Action Plan; harmonize the global-national information and communications development agenda by utilizing a multi-stakeholder process valued by both WSIS and the NCC/ NITDA; present aspects of the Nigerian experience which could provide lessons for other national contexts in the run up to Tunis (2005).

This “bottom-up” sharing session can be beneficial to other states: other countries may benefit from the lessons of the Nigerian experience on many levels: e.g., on multi- stakeholder collaboration, on ground-level innovation, on harmonizing WSIS with national action plans. All these could be then “replicated” (within particular contexts), so that the goals of “global” (i.e., WSIS) become truly are embedded in the “local” (i.e., information societies at the national level).

WSIS Deliverable