Nigeria is working to reduce the amount of taxes telecoms operators are required to pay as the African giant with over 170 million people seeks to encourage more investment in the sector, the minister of communication told Bloomberg.

Johnson Omobola, minister of communications technology in Nigeria, unveiled plans to essentially lower taxes on telecommunications infrastructure in order to encourage companies to invest more on the networks based in Nigeria.

“For every naira that is spent on infrastructure, about 70 percent of it is spent on taxes. We’re going to bring that down to a much more reasonable level at 30 to 40 percent,” Omobola told Bloomberg.

Nigeria is fast becoming a country that international phone companies are eager to tap into. The country has over 177 million active mobile devices, which would make a lower tax for telecom firms more inviting.

IT News Africa reported that Nigeria operators are also facing the challenge like attacks from Islamist militants and unreliable power sources.

MTN Group and India’s Bharti Airtel, the two largest telecoms operators in Africa, have in the past sought  to offload networks in order to reduce exposure to costly African infrastructure in Nigeria.

Omobola said that while only the federal government of Nigeria is allowed to tax mobile phone companies, state and local authorities have found other ways to raise cash by heavily levying operators’ infrastructure, including towers and base stations.

Nigeria plans to award seven new licenses within a year to companies that will build fiber-optic networks in each of the country’s six geopolitical zones. The nation is targeting a 30 percent broadband penetration by 2017.

“These companies will build the infrastructure which they will then lease to the network operators. So in this way, we are trying to attract more investment into the infrastructure,” Omobola said.