NITDA: Talent Development Will Enhance Nigeria’s Economic Growth

Emma Okonji

The Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has stressed the need for government to develop technology talents among Nigerian youths in order to boost the country’s economic growth.

Abdullahi who spoke at a technology forum in Lagos recently, said since 2001 when NITDA was established, the agency had initiated, developed and implemented several Information Technology (IT) policies that are driving development in the sector. According to him, NITDA will continue to drive innovation in the IT sector, develop tech skills, while taking advantage of the country’s youthful population.

“Nigeria has the advantage of developing into a digital economy, based on our population of over 200 million people, with youths forming 50 per cent of the population. Nigeria has the highest inflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) coming into Africa through technology, and Nigeria has five among the seven unicorns in Africa,” Abdullahi said.

Citing recent report from Statista, which stated that Nigeria has an estimated 20,360 startups operating in the country as at December 2022, Abdullahi said investing in these number of startups to further develop their skills and ideas, would boost economic growth for the country.

He said Nigerian startups were able to raise substantive amount from foreign grants last year, and that government needed to develop the startups to enable them do more and even export talents and solutions outside of Nigeria.

The world is in need of four million software developers and Nigeria can conveniently raise two million software developers if adequately trained and this will amount to earning millions of dollars by Nigerian youths, while working for foreign companies from Nigeria. So developing the Nigerian talents will lead to job creation in Nigeria, Abdullahi said..

According to him, “Through some initiatives from NITDA like the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA), in collaboration with industry stakeholders, we were able to train 900 Nigerians and created more than 5,000 direct and indirect jobs in Nigeria.

“NITDA is currently working to achieve 95 per cent digital literacy by 2030, as part of the federal government’s National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) implementation. NITDA has trained more than three million Nigerians on poverty alleviation and financial inclusion and we are still training more.
“NITDA is also looking at developing Nigerian digital skills in the area of Blockchain technology that is expected to rake in about $1.7 trillion globally. Therefore any country that will be able to position itself to fit into the Blockchain technology, will benefit more from technology advancement and we are working to make Nigeria the global talent factory, providing talented workforce across the globe.”

Speaking about the Nigerian Startup Act, Abdullahi said government has commenced its implementation, which he said, would provide legal and institutional frameworks that would guide the country in addressing all identified challenges. He said the Startup Act implementation would help to identify the number of startups in Nigeria and maintain a platform to provide access to information that would help develop the Startup ecosystem in Nigeria.

Abdullahi therefore called for partnership with local and international organisatons to help promote indigenous ICT hubs and build the Nigerian Startup ecosystem. He said NITDA has commenced the building of the Secretariat in Abuja for the implementation of the Startup Act, adding that the Secretariat would be completed by the end of March, 2023.