Nigeria is targeting to attain 95 per cent digital literacy by 2030, according to the Director-General of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mr Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi.
He disclosed this at the opening ceremony of the Financial Services Innovators (FSI) & Nigeria Association of Computing Students (NACOS)’s National Innovation, Research and Software Summit at the Nile University, Abuja on Tuesday.
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The NITDA DG said technologies were taking over almost all human activities, calling on Nigerian youths to key in and create prosperity for themselves and the country at large.
Mr Abdullahi said the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari was determined to diversify the economy, urging the youths to become job creators through innovations even while still in school.
“How can we help people with ideas, to take their ideas from inception to market?
“We have so many initiatives which we help people with these ideas to develop soft skills, to expose them to networks, to expose them to ecosystem and access to funding to achieve that.
“This is the only way that can help us lift our country out of poverty and create prosperity because if you look globally, all the countries that developed, they developed because of innovation.
While explaining how the government is working toward the target of 95 per cent digital literacy rate in Nigeria by 2030, the NITDA DG said the organisation had developed several initiatives like the digital Nigeria portal – an online portal where one can learn about digital literacy, the NITDA academy and the Digital Set programme.
“So far, we have trained about 11,000 Nigerians on three areas; Productivity tools, Digital content creation and digital marketing.”
NACOS National President, Olamilekan Toyeeb Abolade, said the Innovation Challenge of the summit was to address the dominance of cash transactions, manual processes and access to financial services among retailers, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) as well as individuals in the suburban part of Nigeria.
On her part, the Executive Director of FSI, Mrs Aituaz Kola-Oladejo said Nigeria could become a global leader in innovative technology if an enabling platform was created for young Nigerian innovators to thrive.
“At FSI, we are intentional about discovering talents. We are creating a pipeline of talents that will emerge as Fintech unicorns or technology giants which will ultimately keep Nigeria on the global technology map.
