The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) is set to collaborate with organisations in cascading the benefits of digital technology to all the local governments across the country.
The Director-General, NITDA, Mr Kashifu Inuwa, said the collaboration follows the agency’s ongoing effort to transform Nigeria into a globally recognised hub of technology and innovation to drive economic diversification and boost productivity across all sectors.
Inuwa stated this when he played host to the Senior Special Advisers to the President on Community Engagement, South East, Chioma Nweze; South West, Ms Moremi Ojudu and North West, Honorable Abdallah Tanko Yakassai, who visited the agency to discuss possible areas of collaboration on Nigeria’s digital transformation journey.
The gesture is in alignment with the present administration’s priority areas, particularly in the area of reforming the economy for sustained inclusive growth.
While stating the agency’s vision for Nigeria, where inclusive economic growth is fostered through technological innovation, the NITDA DG noted that the vision aligned with the president’s eight priority areas.
“The president wants to reform the economy to deliver sustained economic growth, strengthen national security for peace and prosperity, boost agriculture to achieve food security, boost infrastructure and transportation as enablers of growth, focus on education, health and social investment as enablers of development, accelerate diversification through digitisation, industrialisation, creative art and innovation and improve governance for effective service delivery to citizens,” he said.
He added that the agency recently crafted its Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan (SRAP 2.0) 2024-2027 and its pillars are the tool that will help Mr President in delivering on all the presidential priority areas.
Enumerating the eight pillars of the SRAP, Inuwa highlighted ‘Foster Digital Literacy and Cultivate Talents’ as one of the most important pillars the document is anchored on where inclusivity is pronounced.”
“To ensure we are inclusive, we need to get our citizens to be digitally literate, so we developed the National Digital Literacy Framework with an ambitious target of achieving 95 percent digital literacy by 2030 but Mr President cited a mid-term target for us to achieve 70 percent by 2027,” he stated.
Inuwa further said the agency is collaborating with the Ministry of Education in infusing digital literacy into all academic institution’s curricula while also developing standard training with certifications that would be a prerequisite for securing government employment.
“We have already worked with the Head of Service to put it as a requirement for government workers to be digitally literate. But for the market people, artisans and so on, what they need is the literacy to use digital devices to access internet banking, government digital services and others. We have, therefore, been exploiting many channels to deliver them through TV programmes, social media, radio, road shows and so on,” he averred.
The NITDA boss stated that the three million tech talent programme was another initiative of the Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy in collaboration with the agency to identify skill gaps in the country and build youths’ capacity on skills in high demand locally and internationally.
“We have started the training and so far we have trained over 30,000 and completed the first phase, which is a pilot. We are now executing the second phase of the training,” he said.
In his remark, Honourable Yakassai appreciated the DG NITDA for sharing insights into the various activities of the agency to ensure a digitally empowered nation by building the digital capacities of Nigerians.
He, however, expressed the team’s willingness to collaborate with the agency in the areas of propagating the agency’s activities to the grassroots throughout the 774 local governments in the country.
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