Onome Amuge
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is moving to reframe rural connectivity from a social challenge into an economic opportunity, as it unveils a data-led, partnership-driven plan designed to narrow the country’s widening digital divide and accelerate inclusive growth.
Aminu Maida, Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, stated this at the Rural Connectivity Summit organised recently by Business Metrics in conjunction with other stakeholders in the technology industry. He described digital access as economic infrastructure, arguing that broadband expansion must now be treated as a national productivity and security priority rather than a mere technology goal.
Maida, represented by Tunji Jimoh, NCC’s Lagos Zonal Controller, said the Commission is implementing a deliberate, evidence-based blueprint to connect unserved and underserved communities. “The true measure of connectivity is not in megabits per second but in the economic value it creates,” he said.
Nigeria’s broadband penetration rate stood at 48.81 per cent as of August 2025, according to NCC data, up from 45 per cent a year earlier. But that headline figure conceals a concerning divide. This is as urban centres such as Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt consume about 80 per cent of national data traffic, while rural areas barely reach 23 per cent internet access.
Maida warned that such imbalance is not just a matter of access but a drag on productivity and competitiveness. “A community without digital connectivity is economically invisible. Without it, there is no access to modern education, markets, or healthcare. That invisibility is unacceptable,” he said.
Central to the NCC’s drive to close Nigeria’s digital access gap is the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF), which Maida described as the Commission’s policy vehicle for achieving digital equity in areas deemed commercially unattractive to private operators. Through flagship schemes like RUBI and AMPE, the Fund underwrites the cost of deploying telecom base stations and fibre-optic infrastructure across rural communities.
The Fund, he noted, has also extended its footprint into education and healthcare. Over 2,500 digital education projects have been supported, with 100,000 computers distributed to schools nationwide. The Emerging Technologies Centre at Ogun State Institute of Technology (OGITECH) is one such project, now enabling over 9,000 students to engage in drone-based agricultural innovation.
Healthcare connectivity is advancing through the E-Health and E-Accessibility programmes, linking rural clinics to urban hospitals via telemedicine and deploying assistive tools for persons with disabilities.
To sustain these interventions, the USPF Impact Alliance now mobilises co-funding from private sector and development partners, signalling a shift towards blended financing models for last-mile infrastructure.
The NCC EVC stated that a major plank of the Commission’s evolving framework is the Nigeria Digital Connectivity Index (NDCI), launched on October 9, 2025, to serve as an annual, data-backed scorecard of each state’s digital readiness. By benchmarking connectivity, affordability, and adoption, the index aims to foster inter-state competition and guide investor decisions. Maida said it will inject transparency, accountability, and precision into digital policy implementation.
Complementing the index is the Ease of Doing Business Portal, developed to streamline telecom project licensing and improve investor visibility into infrastructure pipelines, framed as part of the Commission’s effort to derisk sector investment and attract new capital inflows.
Recognising that conventional models have struggled to reach rural frontiers, the NCC is also opening space for community networks. The commission stated it is working in partnership with the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), in finalising a Study on Community Networks ahead of a national policy rollout in January 2026.
The new framework is set to formalise community broadband operators as part of the national network ecosystem, allowing them to plug into existing backbones under flexible licensing rules.
To this end, the NCC is modernising its licensing through the General Authorisation Framework (GAF), introduced in draft form in July 2025. The GAF incorporates regulatory tools such as the Regulatory Sandbox, Proof-of-Concept (PoC), and Interim Service Authorisation (ISA), giving startups room to pilot technologies like low-cost 5G towers and satellite broadband tailored for rural settings.
“This is how we lower barriers. We want innovation to emerge from the grassroots, not just from established operators,” the NCC stated.
