Stakeholders in Nigeria’s telecommunications and digital infrastructure sectors have called for a shift from network coverage to actual usage as efforts intensify to extend meaningful connectivity to underserved communities, RaveNewsOnline reports.
The call was made at the second edition of the Rural Connectivity Summit (RuralConnect 2.0), organised by Business Metrics Limited in Lagos under the theme “Rural Inclusion at Scale: Connecting the Next 25 Million Users for Frontier Market Growth.”
At the summit, regulators, government agencies, telecom operators, infrastructure providers, satellite companies, technology firms, investors and other industry stakeholders examined the financing, power, infrastructure and policy challenges limiting rural connectivity.
From coverage to meaningful usage
President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Tony Emoekpere, said the industry must move beyond measuring progress mainly by coverage and subscriber numbers, arguing that the real test is whether people in rural communities can afford and use the services available to them.
“We need to move away from coverage and think about how to ensure that people in rural communities use the technology services rendered to them,” he said, identifying the cost of devices and data as major barriers to meaningful digital participation.
Emoekpere also proposed a different commercial model for rural connectivity, urging operators to look beyond individual subscribers and consider schools, primary healthcare centres, local government facilities and cooperative societies as anchor tenants capable of generating predictable demand and revenue.
“A site that connects a school, a primary health care centre, a local government and a farm cooperative can enter the phase of revenue from day one. And that can serve as a sustainability,” he said.
He further called for electricity and connectivity infrastructure to be planned together, arguing that every mini-grid should provide an opportunity to support a connectivity site.
Power remains a major constraint
The link between electricity and telecommunications emerged as one of the summit’s most practical concerns, with the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) highlighting the scale and cost of powering rural telecommunications infrastructure with diesel.
In his Keynote address, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of REA, Abba Aliyu, disclosed that Nigeria has more than 11,000 rural base stations, with more than 40 million litres of diesel estimated to be consumed monthly to power a large proportion of them.
“Across the digital sector, when you are talking about rural base stations and rural connectivity, we have about over 11,000 rural base stations. And it’s estimated that over 40 million litres of diesel are consumed every month on powering a lot of these rural base stations,” Umar said.
Represented by the agency’s Executive Director, Technical Services Directorate, Umar Umar”, he described reliable electricity as “the enabling infrastructure for rural connectivity” adding that REA and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) were working towards integrating electricity infrastructure with telecommunications networks.
According to him, the collaboration has progressed from mapping rural mini-grids and telecommunications base stations to evaluating business models and preparing pilot projects involving operators, tower companies and mini-grid developers.
The REA boss also highlighted REA’s existing interventions, including the Nigeria Electrification Project, under which about 380 grant agreements have been signed, more than 150 hybrid solar mini-grids commissioned and approximately 1.45 million solar home systems deployed.
He said the $750 million World Bank-funded Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-Up (DARES) programme of the is expected to support the deployment of 1,350 mini-grids, including 250 interconnected mini-grids, with the broader objective of providing new electricity access to about 17.5 million Nigerians.
Financing and sustaining the last mile
For Tola Yusuf, Founding Partner of Infratel Africa, the central challenge is not a shortage of solutions but the ability to execute them sustainably.
Presenting “The Reality of Rural Connectivity: Pursuing Sustainable Deployment Amid Multiple Challenges,” Yusuf identified five factors that determine whether rural networks survive, listing them as power, payback, permits, protection and people.
“Building a rural site is hard. Keeping it alive is harder,” he said, arguing for solar-first solutions, more viable financing models, streamlined approvals, stronger infrastructure protection and greater community participation.
Yusuf said Nigeria’s difficulty lies in translating established solutions into effective delivery. Citing findings from his doctoral research, he said stakeholders broadly agreed on the value of blended finance, infrastructure sharing, renewable energy and community participation, but funding, coordination and timeliness remained weak areas in actual implementation.
“Nigeria does not have an ideas problem. We have an execution problem,” he said, urging stakeholders to measure outcomes such as network uptime, affordability and whether schools and clinics are connected. “Fund the service. Reward the outcome.”
He also cautioned that backbone infrastructure would not automatically translate into rural inclusion without deliberate last-mile planning. Referring to Project BRIDGE and its planned 90,000 kilometres of fibre, Yusuf said, “Reaching the LGA headquarters is not reaching the village. The backbone creates capacity. The last mile creates inclusion.”
In terms of building the technology ecosystem, Olusola Teniola, Director of Strategic Business Initiatives at ipNX Nigeria, said connectivity at scale would require long-term, naira-based financing and stronger support for indigenous players capable of serving difficult last-mile environments.
He also called for local peering and local content, stressing that policies and strategies must deliberately incorporate ideas from rural communities.
“Those policies and strategies need to be intentional, otherwise we will keep going round in circles,” Teniola said
In his welcome address, Convener of RuralConnect 2.0, Omobayo Azeez, said rural connectivity had moved beyond being solely a telecommunications issue, given its implications for economic opportunity, education, healthcare, agriculture, financial inclusion and public services.
He identified high infrastructure costs, unreliable power, difficult terrain, limited backbone infrastructure and the uncertainty of commercial returns as some of the factors making rural deployment difficult.
“This is why RuralConnect seeks to move the conversation from connectivity as an aspiration to connectivity as an actionable development agenda,” Azeez said.
