The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has made commitment to support and collaborate with Aid for Rural Education and Access Initiative, (AREAI) and any other Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) working within the scope of the Agency’s Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan (SRAP 2021-2024).
The Director General of NITDA, Mallam Kashifu Abdullahi, made this commitment to the Chief Executive Director of AREAI, Prince Gideon Olarewaju, and some members of the organisation during a courtesy visit to NITDA headquarter in Abuja last week.
Abdullahi disclosed that NITDA recently unveiled its Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan, saying: “The SRAP is designed as a template or map to assist the agency achieve the targeted plans through the execution of the strategic pillars,” he explained.
While elaborating further, the NITDA boss said; “SRAP is anchored on 7 strategic pillars, namely, Developmental Regulations, Digital Literacy and Skills, Digital Transformation, Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Cyber Security, Emerging Technologies, and the seventh pillar is the promotion of Indigenous Content.”
He further stated that: “With the mandate and expertise from the Aid for Rural Education and Access Initiative, there is an opportunity for Nigerian youth to position itself as a leader in terms of ICT and digital economy and digital literacy with skills and innovation.”
The DG explained that NITDA is particularly passionate about four areas of collaboration, which are: Digital literacy and skills, Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Local Content development and indigenous investors and innovation.
With regards to digital literacy and skills, NITDA has a target of 95% digital literacy in Nigeria by 2030. Abdullahi said during the lockdown of COVID-19 pandemic, NITDA came up with virtual academy with an enrolment of over sixty thousand online students and beneficiaries. The Agency is now working to upgrading it to a standard mass open online courses platform. He said NITDA is hoping that other related institutions will key into this and start providing skills and certificate courses for our citizenry and even beyond the shores of our country.
On Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Abdullahi said NITDA is already coming up with something new that will impart knowledge to rural communities. In line with Local Content development, the National Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics is one of the centers set up as an intervention center to develop local content and upgrade the skills of our citizen.
He encouraged the AREAI to take advantage of this facility to identify talents and develop ideas in their areas of interest that will impact on the girl child education’s digital literacy and skills. He said it is a platform that the Agency has adopted to change the Nigerian trajectory through training and skill empowerment.
Mallam Abdullahi is quite optimistic that partnership between the Agency and AREAI will uplift the actualisation of their similar mandates such as indigenous investors and innovation programs among others.
He further advised on the constitution of a forum for discussions between NITDA and AREAI to come up with working tools to develop the idea into practicable reality.
Earlier, the Chief Executive Director of Aid for Rural Education and Access Initiative commended NITDA for the opportunity to execute its mandate especially in digital learning which is one of the smartest ways of impacting knowledge to the rural communities. He hopes that the collaboration with NITDA will be a huge advantage to AREAI in harnessing potentials and expertise in bringing more innovation to rural communities digitally.
