The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has ramped up efforts to establish Nigeria in the global digital map in order to attract more investment to the nation’s economy.
The director general of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa made this known on Wednesday during a breakfast parley with members of the media in Abuja, stressing that the Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan initiated by the agency is fully backed by President Bola Tinubu to ensure digital revolution in Nigeria.
The NITDA boss noted that “President Tinubu is loud when it comes to economic reforms and national security, agriculture for food security, enabling environment, accelerating diversification of the economy and many more.
“The president has set his priority on 8 areas which I believe all of you are familiar with. The first one the President wants to reform the economy to deliver sustained growth, the second one, the president wants to strengthen national security for peace and prosperity, the president wants to boost agriculture to achieve food security. The president wants to accelerate diversification and unlock other opportunities in these sectors and IT can help the president deliver all these priority areas.
Kashifu said NITDA crafted the strategy for road map and Action to reflect its commitments to uplifting Nigeria to a special status in the global digital economy by harnessing the potential of innovation, and entrepreneurship.
He said the document hinges on 8 strategic pillars one of which is to foster digital literacy and cultivate talent for inclusive growth, so that every Nigerian will be part of this growth.
“To achieve that we need to promote digital literacy and we have developed the national digital literacy framework which has an ambitious target of achieving 95 per cent digital literacy by 2030,” he said.
He said that so far the agency is working on its midterm target of achieving 70 per cent digital literacy by 2027 even as it is working with the Ministry of Education to review the curriculum across Nigeria’s formal education from nursery to university to infuse digital literacy in the formal education sector.
“By doing that we can empower Nigerians to have digital skills before graduating, we are also conceptualising other initiatives like we will unveil the Digital Literacy For All initiative very soon, which will promote all Nigerians especially those outside the formal education to have access to quality digital content so that they have the knowledge to navigate around digital technology and digital economy.
“We have other initiatives also targeting women, children and people with special needs so that we can help everyone to achieve that 95 per cent digital literacy to help our citizens build their digital fluency on how to use technology,” he added.