Transitioning to Society 5.0 in Africa: Tools to Support ICT Infrastructure Sharing

Society 5.0 represents an opportunity to transform the economy and create a digital society with the goal of long-term sustainable development and economic growth. There is a growing importance of boosting ICT as an effective and efficient means of achieving this transformation, and Target 9c of the UN Sustainable Development Goals is to ‘Significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries’. Mobile telecommunication systems have become the most effective and convenient means of communicating in the world, and as such, they are revolutionizing business operations. Nigeria is the fastest growing telecommunication market in Africa, with approximately 298 million subscribers accommodated by over 53,000 base transceiver stations (BTSs) which are largely concentrated in urban areas. As a result of increasing subscribers, all mobile network service providers in Nigeria are building new BTSs, often without considering existing infrastructure. This has led to a proliferation of masts, defacing the environment and causing unnecessary environmental pollution as BTSs are largely powered by diesel generators. It is therefore becoming paramount for the telecommunication regulatory body in Nigeria to enforce principles of infrastructure sharing and the colocation of sites for all mobile network service provider BTSs to improve network availability, reliability, scalability, customer satisfaction and sustainability. This paper argues, through the development of ICT tools and their application to a case study, that infrastructure sharing and colocation of sites is not only feasible if supported correctly but also offers the potential to reduce operational and capital expenditure, reduce the number of BTSs required for the rapidly growing mobile telecoms industry in Nigeria and in doing so reduce environmental pollution.