NITDA DG: Africa Must Shift From Digital Training To Jobs, Wealth Creation

"Africa had succeeded in expanding digital training but was yet to build an equally effective system for moving trained young people into productive work." Inuwa

“We have industrialised training; we have not yet industrialised the transition.”

.... "Identifies three major barriers confronting young Africans at the point of transition from training to employment or enterprise."

The Director-General/Chief Executive Officer of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, CCIE, has called for a fundamental shift in Africa’s digital workforce strategy, urging policymakers to focus less on the number of people trained and more on how digital skills translate into jobs, businesses and improved livelihoods.

Abdullahi made the call at a high-level panel session on “Scaling Africa’s Digital Workforce”, held under the Digital Skills and Talent Session of “Nigeria at Scale: Building Digital Systems for Shared Prosperity,” on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA81).

The NITDA DG, who spoke alongside Gabon’s Minister of ICT, H.E. Mark Doumba, and product leader and investor, Oji Udezue, said Africa had succeeded in expanding digital training but was yet to build an equally effective system for moving trained young people into productive work.

“We have industrialised training; we have not yet industrialised the transition,” he said.

Abdullahi identified three major barriers confronting young Africans at the point of transition from training to employment or enterprise.

According to him, the first is the “trust gate,” where employers find it difficult to verify the capabilities of job seekers.

The second, he said, is the “platform and connectivity gate,” characterised by inadequate access to devices, affordable internet, reliable electricity and opportunities.

He identified the third as the “demand gate,” where the number of young people entering the labour market far exceeds available formal employment opportunities.

The NITDA boss said Nigeria was responding to the challenge by deliberately linking digital literacy, advanced technical skills, connectivity, cloud infrastructure and job creation as components of a broader digital transformation agenda being implemented by NITDA and the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy.

He cited the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme, which has trained more than 143,000 fellows across three cohorts, as well as the Talent Registry designed to connect verified digital skills with employers.

Abdullahi also highlighted Project BRIDGE, which is expected to deploy at least 90,000 kilometres of open-access fibre and expand Nigeria’s national backbone to about 125,000 kilometres, with coverage extending to all 774 local government areas.

He said the initiative would improve connectivity to thousands of schools, healthcare facilities and local government offices, thereby enabling digitally skilled Nigerians outside major urban centres to participate more effectively in the digital economy.

The DG further drew a distinction between digital literacy and digital employability, saying both were necessary but served different purposes.

He explained that NITDA’s Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan (SRAP 2.0) provides for basic digital literacy to equip Nigerians with the foundational skills required to participate safely and confidently in the digital economy.

At the same time, he said advanced programmes such as 3MTT were designed to prepare young Nigerians for opportunities in artificial intelligence and machine learning, data science, software development, cloud computing and cybersecurity.

Abdullahi, however, stressed that Africa’s digital workforce strategy should not be restricted to formal employment.

He said digital inclusion must also cover traders, artisans, farmers, mechanics, transport operators, food vendors and other entrepreneurs whose businesses could benefit from technology.

For such Nigerians, he said, digital skills should translate into practical benefits, including the productive use of smartphones, digital payments, social media marketing, customer and supplier acquisition, digital record-keeping, fraud protection, access to digital services and the use of artificial intelligence tools to improve productivity.

“The question is not, ‘Can this person get a technology job?’ It is, ‘Can technology help this person earn more, reduce costs, reach more customers and run a better business?’” he said.

Abdullahi therefore called for greater investment in the transition from learning to earning, urging stakeholders to prioritise systems that provide young people with verifiable credentials and access to their first paid work.

“Fund the corridor, not another classroom, verifiable credentials and first-paid-work placement, because Africa’s young people are stuck in the gap between the certificate and the paycheck,” he said.

He maintained that the ultimate measure of Nigeria’s digital skills investments should not be the number of people trained alone, but the number able to convert digital capabilities into jobs, enterprises, higher productivity, increased income and meaningful participation in the digital economy.