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Why Telecom Biz is Booming - M-tel CEO Cultural and sociological factors, including the extended family system and dependence of people in rural Nigeria on their urban counterparts are responsible for the boom in telecoms in Nigeria, the Acting Chief Executive of Nigeria Mobile Telecommuni -cation Limited, Mr Wim Westerink has observed. According to him, the Nigerian telecom sector has defied official statistics and projections and confounded European firms who looked only at official GDP figures and concluded that the country did not have a viable market. "Those analysts failed to take cognisance of salient social factors in Nigeria, particularly the fact of an internal diaspora and the extended family system," he said. Westerink said, "the internal diaspora arises because people are looking for opportunities for jobs, for travel, for financial or other assistance from people, usually relations extending to kindred, community or school level, in places far away from the villages. These are usually the major and minor urban conurbations of the country as well as the cities of Europe, the Americas and Asia. The extended family ensures sustenance of habits such as use of the mobile phone that would not otherwise be possible by persons described in official statistics as living below the poverty line." He identified another factor propelling the growth of the Nigerian telecom sector as the presence of a large and strong informal sector not captured in official statistics, thus making estimates of disposable income difficult to capture. "The informal sector is much larger than the formal sector. All players in the market have had the pleasant experience of inability to cope with demand in locations earlier deemed marginal, not being areas defined in terms of extensive formal commercial activity", he said. Who Are We ? | About THISDAYOnLine.com | THISDAY People | Contact Us © Copyright 2000 Leaders & Company Limited

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