The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Enugu State, Dr. Peter Mbah has promised that his administration will prioritize the building of Information and Communications Technology, ICT, infrastructure in the state, stressing that the backbone would be a Tier-4 hyper-scale cloud neutral data center for internet connectivity and data storage.
Mbah who disclosed this on Thursday during the public unveiling of his manifesto at the Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu, added that the $100 million investment will attract economic activities of over $10 billion while enabling the creation of ICT clusters for access to high speed internet.
The 2023 governorship frontrunner who further said the ambitious project was doable with the collaboration of private sector, also expressed optimism that with the data center in place, information and communications technology giants such as Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook, will establish offices in Enugu.
“Part of what we want to do in our ICT infrastructure is to build a data centre in Enugu State. By the way, that would be the first data centre in the entire South-East and South-South zones. It is going to be a tier-4 hyper scale cloud user data centre. Our plan is to work with the private sector which we have started engaging because, what having a hyper-scale-tier 4 digital centre does is that you are going to be able to attract the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other tech giants to have their offices here (Enugu).
“A data centre of tier-4 hyper scale will attract economic activities of over $10 billion and I have said we do not need $100 million to build a hyper scale tier-4 data centre.
“But just think about it, with $100 million we are able in the next two to three years, to attract economic activities of over $10 billion and in making this business work, we are not looking at Enugu as just the market, we are also looking beyond the region. Our market size extends to the South-East and South-South regions.
“Aside Lagos, this will be the next data centre in Nigeria and so we must do this so we can attract those big names and also engage all these platform strategies we just talked about, building platforms rather than pipelines to enable or enhance productivity in the various sectors.
“These can only happen when you have built a functional data centre; that is a strong backbone you have for both your internet connectivity and storage of data.
“We also will be doing an infusion, internet or ICT penetration across our various academic institutions, from primary school, secondary school to university. We are going to ensure that we expose our young ones to ICT skills.
“As I mentioned earlier, market is migrating from pipelines, from brick and mortar to platforms. What that means is that you want to have your young ones acquire skills in financial technology (Fintech), digital finance, e-commerce, cyber security and others. So we are going to be interested in those areas, to ensure that we equip our young ones to deal with this future greatness that is our dream,” Mbah added.
