L-R: Commissioner of Finance, Cross River State, Mike Odere; CEO, 9mobile, Juergen Peschel, and Director of Institutional Banking, Royal Bank of Scotland International Edinburg, Bryan Fashola during a panel session on “Infrastructural Revolution in Emerging Markets – Accessing PPP Financing for Sustainable Development” at the International Cooperation and Investment Summit, which held in Calabar recently.
Nigeria’s innovative telecommunications company,9mobile, has said it will partner with the Cross River State government to accelerate development and growth in the State.
This proposal was made by the Chief Executive Officer of 9mobile, Juergen Peschel, during a business meeting with the Governor of Cross River State, Senator Prince Bassey Otu, on the sideline of the International Cooperation and Investment Summit, which was held in Calabar recently.
Peschel informed the Governor that 9mobile is open to partnership with his administration and will offer simple, straightforward services of benefit to the State. He presented details of the telco’s proposed partnership: “We propose to build a data center that will be instrumental in hosting any government data and form the basis of digitalizing administrative processes. This will be one of the enablers of improving security in the State and will be based on the ‘Build, Operate, and Transfer Model’. This centre will also help educate and partner with universities to deepen learning”.
He explained further that data centres are vital to global connectivity and the continuity of daily business operations. He said that the benefits of having the data centre would be to support business applications and provide services such as data storage, management, backup and recovery, productivity applications, such as email, high-volume e-commerce transactions, powering online gaming communities as well as big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence which will be beneficial to the State.
In addition, 9mobile also offered to provide electronic governance and contribute to the digitization efforts of the government, including the digitalization of the government’s administrative processes for better service delivery.
While receiving the 9mobile delegation, the State governor, Senator Prince Bassey Otu, said the State is an investment-friendly place and is an ideal hub for investment within the South-South zone. He praised 9mobile for being a worthy partner, saying he was pleased with the offer of further investment in the State through the proposed PPP projects.
Through participation in PPP, 9mobile will contribute its expertise, resources, and investment by bringing employment opportunities to Cross River State. Business owners and entrepreneurs get access to affordable and seamless connectivity.
