The Nigerian Communications Commission has granted the Enugu State Government a 15-year lease to operate its Digital Industrial Park and Learning Centre, handing the south-east state control of a facility built to anchor artificial intelligence training, startup incubation and digital-skills development.
The agreement was signed on Tuesday, August 4, at Government House, Enugu. Under its terms, the state will rebrand and run the facility as the Enugu Talent City and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Institute, aligning it with Governor Peter Mbah’s digital economy drive.
Speaking at the handover, NCC Executive Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dr Aminu Maida said the facilities were conceived as platforms for innovation, entrepreneurship and human-capital development, and should be judged by the economic and human-capital opportunities they create rather than the infrastructure itself. He tied the partnership to the Federal Government’s ambition to grow Nigeria into a $1 trillion economy driven by productivity, innovation and private-sector growth.
The NCC said the centre is designed to give young people space to acquire digital skills, help entrepreneurs build viable businesses, and connect local enterprises to opportunities beyond Enugu and Nigeria, with a particular focus on business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing.
Maida credited Mbah with demonstrating the commitment needed to make the lease work, pointing to investments in infrastructure, education and the recruitment of about 6,500 teachers under the state’s Smart Green Schools initiative. He added that no single institution could build Nigeria’s digital future alone, and that the Federal Government, state governments, the private sector, academia and development partners all have complementary roles to play.
The Enugu deal fits a broader pattern of the NCC devolving operational control of federally built digital infrastructure to state governments seen as capable of driving utilisation, rather than running such facilities centrally from Abuja. For Enugu, it adds a formal AI and skills-training asset to a state investment push that has already drawn attention in the south-east’s tech and education sectors.
Neither the NCC nor the state government disclosed the commercial terms of the lease, including rental value or revenue-sharing arrangements, and it remains to be seen how quickly the rebranded Talent City will begin enrolling trainees or hosting startups.
