The Director-General/CEO of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, CCIE, participated in the high-level panel session, “Scaling Africa’s Digital Workforce,” 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 DG joined H.E. Mark Doumba, ICT Minister of Gabon, and Oji Udezue, Product Leader and Investor, former Chief Product Officer at Calendly and Typeform. The conversation was moderated by Joannes Paulus Yimbesalu, Founder, Nanaade and Africa Skills Alliance; Fellow, Social Innovation + Change Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School.
Abdullahi, during the conversation, challenged policymakers and ecosystem leaders to move beyond counting the number of people trained and focus instead on whether digital skills are being converted into productive work, enterprise and improved livelihoods.
“We have industrialised training; we have not yet industrialised the transition.”
He identified three critical barriers confronting young people as they move from training to work: the trust gate, where employers struggle to verify capabilities; the platform and connectivity gate, where lack of devices, affordable connectivity, reliable power and access to opportunity limits participation; and the demand gate, where the number of people entering the labour market significantly exceeds available formal jobs.
Highlighting Nigeria’s response, NITDA and the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy are deliberately connecting digital literacy, advanced technical skills, connectivity, cloud infrastructure and job creation as parts of one digital transformation agenda.
He referenced the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme, which has trained more than 143,000 fellows across three cohorts, alongside the Talent Registry designed to connect verified skills with employers, the DG, explained.
Abdullahi, highlighted Project BRIDGE, envisioned to deploy at least 90,000 kilometres of open-access fibre and extend Nigeria’s national backbone to about 125,000 kilometres, reaching all 774 Local Government Areas.
The initiative is expected to expand connectivity to thousands of schools, healthcare facilities and local government offices, helping ensure that talent developed outside major cities can participate in the digital economy.
A central message of the DG’s intervention was that digital literacy and digital employability are related but distinct objectives.
Through NITDA’s Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan (SRAP 2.0), basic digital literacy is designed to give every Nigerian the foundational capabilities to participate safely and confidently in the digital economy, while advanced programmes such as 3MTT prepare young Nigerians for opportunities in AI and machine learning, data science, software development, cloud computing and cybersecurity.
Africa’s digital workforce strategy cannot be built solely around formal employment. however, digital inclusion must encompass traders, artisans, farmers, mechanics, transport operators, food vendors and other entrepreneurs whose livelihoods can be transformed through technology, Abdullahi stated.
For these Nigerians, digital skills should translate into practical capabilities: using smartphones productively, accepting digital payments, marketing through social media, finding customers and suppliers, maintaining digital records, protecting themselves from fraud, accessing digital services and using AI tools to increase productivity, he explained.
“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?’
“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.”
For NITDA, therefore, the measure of success is not simply how many Nigerians are trained, but how many can translate digital capability into jobs, enterprise, higher productivity, greater income and meaningful participation in the digital economy.
The DG, concluded with a compelling call to redirect greater attention toward the critical bridge between learning and earning.
