At the recently concluded Annual Meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund held in Washington D.C, Mallam Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, director general, Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), spoke on the theme: Pathway to Prosperity: Unlocking Green Jobs For Women and Youth Through Renewable Energy Access. In this Interview, The DG illuminated more on it and many other issues.
Could you please give us a brief on your participation at the meetings today?
Thank you very much. We are here to share the transformative agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and how that transformation is driving rural prosperity in Nigeria. Even though the core of the theme of the conversation is around rural electrification using renewable energy but we look at it like the renewable energy is not the end goal. It is a fundamental enabler.
It is a catalyst for everything else because when there is power, connectivity follows. And when connectivity arrives, it ignites every other transformation. It empowers people with technology to achieve 10x leap in productivity and getting opportunities, efficiency and so on.
Artificial intelligence and the need for countries like Nigeria to reach that gap which is also at the core of engagement for young persons. What are the efforts from NITDA to reach this gap?
Our approaches. Yes, we have challenges. We have challenges in the area of energy and so on which at the battle of today we need to win. But fighting the battle of today should not take our attention away from shaping our future. The future is about technology. It is about AI.
AI is a general purpose technology. It’s going to be more powerful than electricity. It will transform everything we do from agriculture to finance to education to anything you can think of AI will transform it. So at NIDA we’ve been intentional and strategic when it comes to positioning Nigeria on how to lead in AI transformation.
We started by establishing a centre, the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Then we crafted our national strategy because without strategy you won’t know your choices and you won’t have a direction.
But the strategy is giving us a direction on where we are going. And our vision is clear. It’s about building sustainable, responsible and inclusive AI system that will foster sustainable development across the country.
What is your vision for the Agency?
So our vision is to make Nigeria a digitally empowered nation, fostering inclusive economic growth through technological innovation. Technology on its own, it is not a vertical sector, but it permeates across horizontal every critical sector.
How can we use technology to enhance productivity and efficiency in agriculture, health, in finance, in education, in anything you can think of, trade, commerce, everything.
So today technology is pervasive, it’s integrated everywhere. So our vision as an agency is to catalyze that adoption and accelerating.
How do you see the agency evolving in the next five to 10 years, and what role will need to play in shaping the future of the Nigerian digital space?
So our strategy also is clear. As we win today, we need to shape the future. Technology evolves, and as it evolves, you need to evolve with it. So we have a strategic roadmap and action plan with eight strategic pillars.
The first one is to foster digital literacy and cultivate talent, which we are implementing to win the battle of today.
To create jobs for our citizens, to make sure every citizen has access to digital infrastructure and services. To make sure we use technology to drive national prosperity and inclusivity.
The second pillar is on creating robust technology research ecosystem, which is more futuristic.
The first one is to help us win today and the second one is to shape our tomorrow, where we focus on AI, that’s the Artificial intelligence, Robotics, blockchain, additive manufacturing, UAV, and AI. That’s the six technologies we are looking at. They are all general-purpose technology. They cut across all economic sectors, and they can drive growth and national prosperity.
Do you have trust issues with your stakeholders? And if you do, how do you build that trust?
So for me personally, my leadership philosophy is about trust because I believe that when there is trust, everything will become simple. So as an ecosystem, government is working with everyone, and we are reinventing our social contract with the ecosystem.
We are engaging them. We are co-creating and co-designing everything. The President is clear. He wants to build an economy that is private sector-led, but government-enabled.
So to achieve that is not something government will sit in the office, use armchair theory to come up with policies and regulation. But government engages the ecosystem players to co-create and co-design policies and regulations.
So that’s what will help us to rebuild the trust because already we have trust deficits. We were coming from a situation whereby governments and private sector were not engaging.
We’re playing blame game. But today we are in a situation whereby government and private sector sit together in a room to co-design and co-create initiatives. And we jointly own and implement those initiatives.
To strengthen that, the president also approved a new PPP policy where government can use private sector funds to build infrastructure that can create value and drive national prosperity and inclusivity.
So at the digital sector also, we are exploring this. How can we use private sector to build digital public infrastructure? One key example is Project Bridge launched by our minister to roll 90,000 fibre optics kilometres. Another one is our Digital Literacy for All, which we are partnering with private sector to develop our national digital fluency. When you do that, you have more users.
Our citizens will embrace technology and use it. That can create value. When value is created, private sector captures the values.
Can you please share some stories on NITDA transformation initiatives and how it has impacted Nigeria
NITDA was established in 2001 to implement the national IT policy. When the agency was established, less than 500,000 Nigerians were using computers. And ICT was contributing less than 0.5% of our GDP.
But today, we have more than 130 million Nigerians with access to the internet. That means they are not just using computers, but they have access to the internet, which is more than 51% of our population. And today, ICT is contributing more than 17% of our GDP.
So look at this. And this is just ICT, not digital economy because when you talk about digital economy, it’s beyond ICT.
Digital economy is any economy that has been stimulated by technology. Today, you cannot talk about finance sector without technology. You cannot talk about entertainment without technology. Everything, technology is embedded.
So if you can rebase the GDP contribution, digital economy contribution will be more than that 17%. Then part of the recent success stories of NITDA is like the data protection, which has created an industry and led to establishing a new autonomous commission.
The president signed the Nigerian Data Protection Act into law in 2023. And also our approach to building our digital sovereignty because also as a nation, we need to have a capacity for our digital self-determination.
Today, we don’t control our data. We don’t control the systems we use. We don’t even have digital infrastructure that can help us to succeed in the future. So we are working with the private sector as well to come up with policies that can help us create the enabling environment for us to achieve our digital sovereignty as a nation.
How do you plan to address digital divide in Nigeria, ensuring that everyone has access and opportunity to digital?
So we look at digital divide from two angles. Firstly, the access. The accessibility of the digital technology and the second one is the literacy because access without literacy is meaningless.
We want people to have the technology and use it meaningfully. In the area of access, we do a lot of intervention in building digital economy centres around the country.
From 2023 to date, we’ve built over 220 digital economy centres. And our target is before 2027, we are going to build over 500 centres. And we also have an initiative, Project 774, where we want to have at least a centre in every local government.
We have worked with the Ministry of Education to develop digital literacy and skills curriculum, which has been approved and the president has directed for implementation to start immediately. Now we are training teachers on how to start teaching digital literacy and skills.
We’ve done a proof of concept with some universities on making digital literacy a general studies in universities and now we are working with NUC to mainstream that, to make digital literacy a general studies the same way every student take English and mathematics.
Now you must take digital literacy and skills. We are also partnering with NYSC to ensure that every Nigerian, the market women, the motor park workers, our senior citizens, people in the religious places have basic digital literacy as well. Then the third one is about the workforce readiness.
We want all public servants as well to be digitally literate. We are already implementing this also in partnership with Office of the Head of Civil Service. It is already a mandatory skills requirement for anybody to join public service today.
And if you are already in the service, it’s a requirement for you to get promotion. So this is the way we are ensuring or working to make sure we bridge the digital divide in Nigeria to drive rural prosperity.
What plans do you have for children?
So we have many initiatives to catch them young. Like the first one I mentioned is integrating it into our formal education because from kindergarten to tertiary institutions, digital literacy and skills will be part of the formal education.
So as they go through the education journey, they will be empowered with what they need to know. Then in addition to that, all those centres we have, we run programmes, mostly during vacations where we empower these children with the basic digital skills as well as to expose them to the technology.
Then we have other initiatives for the teen and young adult where they can join to build skills as well as to challenge them to come up with innovative solutions.
Like we have the Idea Hatch, which runs across the country where we get younger people with innovative ideas, place them for a three to six month programme in an innovation hub to help them turn those ideas into products and services.
The target for that initiative is at the end of the programme, you have a product ready for market or at least you develop your minimum viable product that you can go to anywhere and accelerate it. And we do this in partnership with some stakeholders like JICA, which they provide a seed fund for the best students.
As well as also help them with international exposure. Recently during the Japan Africa Summit in Tokyo, they sponsored about six young startups, mostly women because we have the Idea Hatch and we have an Ignite initiative, which targeted women.
The Idea Hatch is for everyone, but because also we have a gender inclusion strategy. That focusses more on achieving parity between men and women. We have other initiatives focussing specifically to women.
How is NITDA supporting innovations and entrepreneurship in the Nigerian eco-tech system?
We have the Nigerian Startup Act, which is the legal and institutional framework we use to support innovation. The Act also was co-designed and co-created with the ecosystem. It was not just government sitting in the office coming up with legislation.
We co-created it together. The Act has a roadmap and helps the startup to orchestrate their journey from ideation to impact. So, part of the institutional framework is to have the consultative forum, which has been established where startups have been registered.
They have an online community because we also developed the startup engagement portal. They use that portal to engage as an online community.
Through the portal, they have selected their own leaders that will represent them at the National Digital Economy and Innovation Council.
The Council will be chaired by Mr. President. The Vice President is the Vice Chair. Under the Council, we have many ministers, including the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, while NITDA is the Secretariat. Through that Council, we will be presenting policy proposals that will help create and shape activities within the startup ecosystem.
What are some of the biggest challenges facing the Nigerian digital economy and how is NITDA addressing them? That will also include cybersecurity and energy equity.
Major challenges are around talent, infrastructure, access to capital, and risk. In terms of the talent, technology or talent is the people component of technology. Technology makes our lives better, but people make the technology better. For you to build a thriving digital ecosystem, you need to have that talent pool. That’s the reason we are integrating digital skills into our formal education.
Also, we have an initiative, a talent acceleration programme with 3 million tech talents, which we are using as a stock gap to create the talent pool that will help us build our digital offerings. In the area of capital, it’s also a big challenge because we don’t have people in Nigeria that provide a patient capital for these innovators. We don’t have people investing in innovation.
Most of our investors invest in the conventional sector, where there is a hedging and risking mechanism. Most of the capital today comes from the West, but the U.S. in particular. That framework is creating some patient capital. We are also creating capital for impact.
Recently, through our partnership with JICA, we are creating a patient fund of about 14 million U.S. dollars, which is going to be for impact. Other initiatives of Mr. President, like the youth entrepreneurship and innovation bank, which is going to be an initiative supported by African development banks and other development partners. It is going to establish a fund that will help provide capital for the innovation ecosystem.
Also, we have the IDICE, which has reached an advanced stage in terms of implementation. All these initiatives will help us address the capital challenge. The third one is infrastructure. We have an infrastructure deficit. Mostly, you get this infrastructure in big cities like Lagos and Abuja. For us to succeed and drive national prosperity, we need to democratise access to this infrastructure across the country. That’s why we are rolling the connectivity project.
We are pushing for hyperscalers to come and build the compute power within Nigeria. We are also coming up with policies that will help us to have a clean data set and open data, because you need data to innovate. We have the National Data Strategy. We have established the Nigerian Data Protection Commission, and we have a legislation, the Act.
We are driving data classification now. That will help us also to know what can go into the public cloud and what can stay in-country. These are the challenges, and what we are doing to address those challenges so that we can create an enabling environment for technical innovation.
Aside JICA, what other notable partnerships have you been able to choose from?
We have many partners we are working with locally and international partners. I mentioned JICA. We are working with COICA. We are working with big techs like Cisco.
It’s helping us building content for all the digital literacy initiatives. They are doing it as part of the CSR. We are not paying for it.
Our citizens can go and take the courses online and globally recognised certificates, and it counts for the degree programme.
We are partnering with Google, Microsoft, and we are partnering with even Huawei from China and other development partners like DCO, the Digital Corporation Organisation.
We are partnering with ITU to do some events and activities. And before also, we worked even with the World Bank to implement some initiatives targeted at women. Okay, I was going to talk about women. Before also, we have an IGNITE initiative, which is supported by JICA.
We also have initiatives we are doing with GIZ. Like today, we are launching an initiative in partnership with GIZ and the umbrella body of traders in Nigeria, which is about digital trust mark.
Then we also partner with EU and FCDO from UK. We’ve worked with USAID from the U.S. before, and even the U.S. government. We have very good relationships.
So we have a broad list of partners. We work together, both from international organisations and local ones.
Looking at all what you’re doing with the agency, at what point would you say you have achieved your aims and objectives?
For me, I see it as an infinite gap. It doesn’t have a clear end line. When we reach the objectives of today, we are going to set the goals for tomorrow.
So it keeps evolving because when you have a finite target, that means you will not strive continuously. So we have our leadership principles.
For everything we do, we make clarity. We unleash energy. We build trust. We win today, and we share tomorrow.
