World Bank, WTO, NITDA move to enhance digital trade

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have teamed up to accelerate diversification through industrialisation and digital trade.

This was made known when the DG of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa, played host to a delegation from the World Bank and the WTO, led by Mr Aleksandar Stojanov at the agency’s corporate headquarters in Abuja yesterday.

The meeting was centered on fostering deep collaboration between the two organisations to enhance digital trade, cross-border data services and sharing ideas on developing regulatory policies that would accelerate economic growth through technological innovations.

Speaking on the agency’s move to review most of its regulations, Inuwa said: “We started with recrafting our Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan 2.0 for 2024-2027 which has eight strategic pillars, among which is Strengthening Policy Implementation and Legal Framework, and what we need to put in place to make sure we create an enabling environment for the digital economy and digital trade.”

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He highlighted key regulatory advancements and revealed that NITDA was at an advanced stage of establishing a National Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) which would underpin the nation’s electronic signature framework.

He further said, “The EU just developed a Cyber Resilience Act which covers all these software and hardware testing issues so we can also have one instrument that can look at the cyber resilience, the software, hardware, firmware issues and even the national cyber security architecture could be part of that.”

He expressed the agency’s willingness to collaborate with individuals, organisations and experts to refine and implement all these strategic initiatives in optimising Nigeria’s digital landscape.

In his earlier address, Mr Stojanov shared their initial findings from the digital trade regulatory gap analysis conducted by the World Bank on the continent, particularly in Nigeria, and how regulations could play a critical role in enhancing it.