# Transitioning to Society 5.0 in Africa: Tools to Support ICT Infrastructure Sharing
## 5 Conclusions  
In order to transform the economy and create a digital society with the goal of long-term sustainable development and economic growth that underpins Society 5.0, there is a need to meet target 9c of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This goal sets out to 'Significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries'. As such, there is need for expansion and transformation of the mobile telecommunication industry in Africa. As has been argued in this paper, and demonstrated through a small case study using a prototype ICT tool, a promising way to achieve sustainable and accessible  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \multicolumn{5}{c}{**3 Independent Sites**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**3 Colocated Sites**} \\ \hline
**SN** & **Item** & **Unit** & **Cost (NGN)** & **Unit** & **Cost (NGN)** \\ \hline
1 & Diesel generator & 3 & 18,000,000 & 1 & 6,000,000 \\
2 & Land rent & 3 & 600,000 & 1 & 200,000 \\
3 & Air conditioner & 3 & 375,000 & 1 & 125,000 \\
4 & Mast & 3 & 12,000,000 & 1 & 4,000,000 \\
5 & Power backup battery & 72 & 311,040,000 & 24 & 103,680,000 \\
6 & Rectifier & 3 & 144,000 & 1 & 48,000 \\
7 & Power amplifier & 3 & 570,000 & 1 & 190,000 \\
8 & Converter & 3 & 750,000 & 1 & 250,000 \\
9 & Diesel consumed (Liters) & 54,759 & 12,483,000 & 21,900 & 4,993,200 \\
10 & Diesel tank & 3 & 450,000 & 1 & 150,000 \\
11 & Duplexer & 3 & 435,000 & 1 & 145,000 \\  & Total & & 356,847,000 & & 119,781,200 \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 6: Unit cost of components for original and collocated sites.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c} \multicolumn{5}{c}{**Three Base Stations**} & \multicolumn{5}{c}{**Two Base Stations**} & \multicolumn{5}{c}{**One Base Station**} \\ \hline
**Signal** & Area (ha) & \% & Boxes & Area (ha) & \% & Boxes & Area (ha) & \% & Boxes \\
**Strong** & 4108.06 & 81.42 & 263 & 3967.48 & 78.64 & 254 & 3795.66 & 75.24 & 243 \\
**Weak** & 359.26 & 7.12 & 23 & 562.23 & 11.15 & 36 & 484.22 & 9.60 & 31 \\
**Fade** & 437.36 & 8.67 & 28 & 359.26 & 7.12 & 23 & 562.32 & 11.15 & 36 \\
**No signal** & 150.58 & 2.79 & 9 & 150.62 & 3.10 & 10 & 203.06 & 4.03 & 13 \\
**Total** & 5044.71 & 100.00 & 323 & 5044.71 & 100.00 & 232 & 5044.71 & 100.00 & 323 \\ \multicolumn{5}{c}{} \\ \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 5: BTS signal strength coverage and area.  
network coverage seems to be through a combination of infrastructure sharing, allowing cost-effective and cooperative network expansion whereby the various stakeholders in the telecommunication sector will see the largest benefits. As demonstrated by these results in the context of Nigeria, infrastructure sharing has the potential to help in improving the quality of service rendered by mobile network operators and reducing CO2 emission through reduced fuel consumption. This will help in reducing capital expenditure and operational expenditure of mobile network operators through sharing of running costs. As it has been demonstrated, the amount of emitted CO2 will be reduced through reductions in fuel consumption (although other influencing factors need to be considered). This will also potentially help in reducing the proliferation of masts defacing the environment. As a result, subscribers' tariffs could also be reduced if regulators act appropriately. The results also indicate that infrastructure sharing could help to stimulate economic growth through better deployment of mobile broadband in less developed regions of Nigeria. This may also help in providing better services and network deployment in urban areas that are congested, especially in a situation where new site acquisition is not possible. Future work will involve more precise analysis and the deployment of larger case studies and focus upon the further development and analysis of optimization and decision support tools to support sustainable infrastructure sharing and expansion.