NITDA Inaugurates Committee to Boost Innovation-friendly Regulation
By Alabidun Shuaib AbdulRahman
The National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA has inaugurated a Technical Working Group aimed at strengthening regulatory collaboration and advancing a coordinated sandbox framework to support innovation within Nigeria’s digital economy.
Speaking at the inauguration, the Director General of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa, represented by the Acting Director of Regulation and Compliance, Emmanuel Edet, said stronger collaboration among regulatory agencies had become necessary to address structural challenges slowing innovation in the country.
According to him, members of the Technical Working Group were selected based on their institutional roles and ability to provide practical solutions suited to the realities of Nigeria’s evolving digital ecosystem.
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He noted that while regulatory agencies have legitimate mandates, the increasing complexity of digital technologies now requires greater alignment among institutions to ensure regulations encourage innovation rather than hinder it.
“As government institutions, our core responsibility is to provide solutions to the challenges faced by Nigerians. The issue is not a lack of commitment, but a structural one. Regulators often operate in silos while implementing their mandates, and in today’s digital environment, that model presents significant limitations,” he said.
Inuwa stated that the rapid growth of the digital economy had continued to outpace conventional regulatory systems, thereby creating gaps capable of delaying innovative solutions that could improve livelihoods and drive national development.
He explained that NITDA was championing a multi-agency regulatory framework to encourage cooperation among regulators, harmonise overlapping mandates, and create adaptive mechanisms capable of supporting innovation while maintaining effective oversight.
According to him, a key component of the strategy is the adoption of regulatory sandboxes, which would provide controlled environments where innovators can test emerging technologies under the supervision of relevant authorities.
“Our guiding principle is that we learn by doing. Through these sandboxes, regulators can contribute to building safe spaces where innovation can be nurtured, tested, and scaled for the benefit of Nigerians,” he added.
The NITDA boss also assured stakeholders that the initiative would not undermine the statutory powers of any agency, but would instead improve coordination and build a more responsive regulatory environment capable of adapting to technological advancements.
He expressed optimism that the Technical Working Group would help shape forward-looking regulatory solutions and strengthen NITDA’s vision of positioning itself as an ecosystem orchestrator for digital transformation and sustainable development.
Presenting an overview of the National Regulatory Sandbox, the National Coordinator of the Office for Nigerian Digital Innovation, Victoria Fabunmi, said the initiative would provide a structured legal and multi-agency framework for innovators to test emerging technologies before full market approval.
Fabunmi said innovators in sectors such as Artificial Intelligence, fintech, health technology, and blockchain often face delays caused by fragmented regulations and uncoordinated approval processes.
She noted that the National Regulatory Sandbox was designed not just as a digital platform, but as a governance framework that would create an enabling environment for responsible innovation.
According to her, Nigeria’s model is intentionally sector-agnostic, allowing regulators across sectors including agriculture, mobility, clean energy, digital health, and digital public infrastructure to collaborate in supporting innovation.
She added that the framework would allow startups and innovators to engage multiple regulators simultaneously within a controlled testing environment, thereby reducing bureaucratic bottlenecks and shortening time-to-market for emerging technologies.
Fabunmi further stated that the sandbox would generate shared regulatory insights to help participating agencies develop informed and adaptive policies that support responsible innovation.
The inauguration of the Technical Working Group, she said, marks another step in NITDA’s efforts to create a more agile and innovation-friendly regulatory environment aligned with Nigeria’s ambition of becoming a leading digital economy in Africa.
