NITDA Partners with Presidential Advisers to Propel Nigeria’s Digital Transformation to Grassroots
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NITDA Partners with Presidential Advisers to Propel Nigeria’s Digital Transformation to Grassroots
By Alabidun Shuaib AbdulRahman
In its ongoing mission to establish Nigeria as a global hub of technology and innovation, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) announced plans to collaborate with various organizations to extend the benefits of digital technology to all local governments across the country.
NITDA Director General, Kashifu Inuwa CCIE, revealed this initiative during a meeting with Senior Special Advisers to the President on Community Engagement from the South East, South West, and North West regions.
The advisers—Barr Chioma Nweze, Ms. Moremi Ojudu, and Hon. Abdallah Tanko Yakassai—visited NITDA to discuss potential collaborations to advance Nigeria’s digital transformation.
This initiative aligns with the administration’s priority to reform the economy for sustained inclusive growth.
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The NITDA DG emphasized that their vision of fostering inclusive economic growth through technological innovation is in harmony 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; enhance infrastructure and transportation as growth enablers; focus on education, health, and social investment; accelerate diversification through digitization, industrialization, creative art, and innovation; and improve governance for effective service delivery,” Inuwa stated.
Inuwa recalled that NITDA has developed a Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan (SRAP 2.0) for 2024-2027 to support these goals.
“One of the key pillars of SRAP is fostering digital literacy and talent cultivation, with an ambitious target of achieving 95% digital literacy by 2030 as Mr President cited a mid-term target for us to achieve 70% by 2027,” he stated.
He further said that the agency is collaborating with the Ministry of Education in infusing digital literacy into all academic institutions curricula while at the same time 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,” Inuwa reiterated.
“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, roadshows and so on.”
The NITDA boss stated that, the 3 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”.
In his remarks, Hon. Yakassai appreciated the NITDA head for his wonderful presentation by sharing insights into the various activities of the agency to ensuring a digitally empowered nation by building the digital capacities of Nigerians.
He, therefore, expressed his teams 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.
“Mr President is a grassroot person, reason why he created this office. It is to make sure that whatever the government is doing is taken down to the grassroots level. We assure you that we will show the people the importance of your programmes and how they can key into it,” Yakassai assured.
