NITDA Charges IT Stakeholders on Disruptive Technology

The Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Abdullahi has urged Information Technology (IT) stakeholders to develop technology ideas that will disrupt the present status quo.

He stated this in Lagos, while in a meeting with stakeholders during a three-day working visit to the state.

Abdullahi used the occasion to call for the formation of strong synergy between the Agency and Information Technology stakeholders in the country.

While speaking on the need for disruptive technology, the Director-General urged IT stakeholders to come up with new business model, new organisational structure that would disrupt the status quo in order to accelerate digitalization.

Abdullahi said: “As NITDA we look at digital transformation from two lenses, digitisation which is using digital technology to enhance existing services and digitalisation which is delivering rapid business innovation, and to achieve that, we need you, the startups. Innovation starts from the startups. We look at innovation as a process, which is taking ideas from inception to impact which can be very difficult.”

He explained that President Muhammadu Buhari had expanded the ministry’s mandates to cover digital economy because communication remained the technology, which is a means to an end, but digital economy is using the technology to improve the economic status.

According to the NITDA boss, stakeholders were engaged on the formulation of the National Digital Economy Policy and agencies under the ministry keyed into the implementation of the policy adding that “NITDA’s focus is on the startups and IT stakeholders.”

He further said: “We are here to share the Strategic Road Map and Action Plan (SRAP), which is anchored on seven pillars: Developmental Regulation; Digital Literacy and Skills; Digital Transformation; Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Cyber Security; Emerging Technologies; and Promotion of Indigenous Content for feedback. This is so because the Agency doesn’t exist in isolation, which is the reason we have to carry the stakeholders along in our implementation processes.”

DG NITDA identified six key strategic stakeholders; the entrepreneurs who innovate and start up business, higher institutions which enhances talent, government which is an enabler, corporate organisation who absorb the human capital, venture capital, angel investors funding and the media that will promote the products.

In his remarks, one of the representatives of the innovation stakeholder, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji from Future Africa, was of the opinion that government must work with the ecosystem to create synergy. He said “If the government doesn’t work with us as a matter of urgency, everything will crash, variants need urgent intervention.”

He added, “We can’t build talents in Lagos alone, it has to be from all parts of the country. If universities are being provided with laptops and internet connections, we as stakeholders can do the rest, especially when it comes to infrastructure; the government has to partner with private companies as well as building research facilities.”

Abdullahi said NITDA would not achieve all its mandates by working in isolation. He therefore called for stakeholders’ partnership with industry players to drive the much needed technology innovation.

“We expect you to always be on board and constantly informing the Agency on what you need to achieve because government is an enabler and the Agency can only enable what the stakeholders put forward,” Abdullahi added.