NITDA Unveils Regulatory Sandbox Team to Fast-Track Digital Innovation

Acting Director of Regulation and Compliance, Barr Emmanuel Edet, who represented the DG NITDA, with the newly inaugurated members of the Technical Working Group (TWG) for the National Regulatory Sandbox, at the Agency’s Corporate Headquarters in Abuja.

“Our guiding principle is that we learn by doing. Through these sandboxes, regulators can contribute to building safe spaces where innovation can be nurtured, tested and scaled for the benefit of Nigerians." NITDA DG.

A Technical Working Group (TWG) to strengthen regulatory collaboration and create a more innovation-friendly environment for Nigeria’s growing digital economy, has been inaugurated by the National Information Technology Development Agency, National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA.

The initiative behind the inauguration is aimed at developing a coordinated regulatory sandbox framework that will allow innovators and startups to test emerging technologies under the supervision of relevant government agencies before full market deployment.

Director General of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi CCIE, while speaking during the inauguration, said stronger collaboration among regulators had become necessary due to the increasingly complex nature of digital technologies.

Inuwa, who was represented by the Acting Director of Regulation and Compliance, Emmanuel Edet, explained that regulators often operate independently while implementing their statutory mandates, a situation he described as a structural challenge capable of slowing innovation in the digital ecosystem.

According to him, "the rapid growth of the digital economy has continued to outpace conventional regulatory systems, creating gaps that could delay the deployment of innovative solutions capable of improving livelihoods and driving national development.

“In today’s digital environment, regulators operating in silos present significant limitations. Our responsibility as government institutions is to provide solutions to the challenges faced by Nigerians,” he said.

Inuwa noted that members of the TWG were carefully selected based on their institutional relevance and capacity to contribute practical solutions to Nigeria’s evolving digital ecosystem.

He explained that the multi-agency regulatory framework being championed by NITDA would help regulators better understand overlapping mandates while jointly developing adaptive policies that encourage innovation without compromising oversight responsibilities.

Central to the initiative, he said, is the adoption of regulatory sandboxes — controlled environments where innovators can safely test new technologies and solutions with regulatory guidance.

“Our guiding principle is that we learn by doing. Through these sandboxes, regulators can contribute to building safe spaces where innovation can be nurtured, tested and scaled for the benefit of Nigerians,” he added.

The NITDA boss stressed that the initiative was not designed to weaken the statutory powers of regulatory agencies, but rather to improve institutional coordination and build a more responsive regulatory ecosystem capable of keeping pace with technological advancement.

He expressed optimism that the Technical Working Group would serve as a strategic platform for developing forward-looking regulatory solutions and advancing NITDA’s vision of positioning itself as an ecosystem orchestrator driving digital transformation and sustainable development.

Also speaking, National Coordinator of the Office for Nigerian Digital Innovation (ONDI), Victoria Fabunmi, described the National Regulatory Sandbox as a structured legal and governance framework that would enable innovators to test emerging technologies under regulatory supervision before obtaining full approval for market entry.

Fabunmi said innovators across sectors such as Artificial Intelligence, fintech, digital health and blockchain had continued to face challenges arising from fragmented regulations, siloed approval processes and the absence of coordinated mechanisms for testing new technologies.

She noted that while Nigeria’s digital economy was expanding rapidly, the lack of harmonised regulatory engagement had often delayed innovation and created uncertainty for startups and technology-driven businesses.

According to her, Nigeria’s sandbox model is intentionally sector-agnostic, allowing regulators from sectors including agriculture, mobility, clean energy and digital public infrastructure to collaborate in supporting innovation.

Under the framework, startups will be able to engage multiple regulators simultaneously within a controlled testing environment, a move expected to reduce bureaucratic bottlenecks and shorten time-to-market for emerging solutions.

Fabunmi added that the sandbox would also generate shared, evidence-based regulatory insights to help agencies collectively develop adaptive policies that support responsible innovation.

The inauguration of the Technical Working Group marks another major step in NITDA’s efforts to build a more agile, collaborative and innovation-driven regulatory environment as Nigeria pushes to position itself as a leading digital economy in Africa.