Nigerian Mobile Economy Forum 2011 gets new date…garners more interest

With the stage now set for the inaugural edition of the forum designed to leverage and enhance the mobile platform for economic activities in Nigeria, organizers of the event, Private Media Mart Limited has announced the official date and venue for the event. The event, aptly titled Nigeria Mobile Economy Forum (NiMEF) 2011, seeks to provide answers and solutions to the huge dearth of local Mobile Content in the Nigerian telecommunications scene despite our huge Mobile market – both potential and actual and with recent investments in bandwidth.

Focusing on the theme, Economic Transformation Using Mobile Innovations, the eagerly awaited NiMEF 2011 will now be holding on the 31^st of March 2011 at the prestigious De Renaissance, Ikeja, Lagos from 9.00am. Confirming this recently, the managing partner and chief executive officer of the major organizing firm, Private Media Mart Limited (PMM Nigeria), Mr. Ejiofor Agada explained that the slight delay in announcing the official date for the event was borne out of their usual practice of confirming participants and attendees for any of their events before making it public.

His words: “With the confirmation of attendance and support from industry bodies like Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP) and the Nigerian IT Development Agency (NITDA), we are confident that this event will achieve its desired objective of delivering realistic processes for mobile business in Nigeria”.

According to Mr. Agada, at almost 100 million strong subscriber base, the Nigerian Mobile market is the fastest growing in the world, yet in terms of content (applications, usage, etc) it still ranks among the very least in the world. It is based on this trend that PMM Nigeria, in collaboration with Tribe Media and IT Edge Magazine decided to use the NiMEF medium to analyze and showcase the potentials of a market like Nigeria, with its huge potentials, business guidelines, regulations and protections as well as encouragements that are needed to jump-start this previously untapped economy base.

Citing the exciting phenomena in other high mobile-user rate economies around the world where the mobile platform has been used to deploy economic activities like Banking, Ticketing, Loyalty schemes, Gaming, Navigation, Education, and Entertainment, it is strange that such activities are not carried out in Nigeria, and even where it is done, there are no proper regulation by any agency.

Mr. Agada also observed that even though the Nigerian market ranks highest in market value for most phone manufacturers, “not a single locally developed application is running in any mobile phone in Nigeria” he said. It is to correct this trend and point the right way forward for existing and potential Mobile Business entrepreneurs that NiMEF 2011 was designed” he concluded.

NiMEF 2011 is currently attracting the attention of private sector telecommunication and Banking sector players and is meant to be a full-day event.