By Saminu Ibrahim
The Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has called for a shift from measuring Africa’s digital skills development by the number of people trained to assessing how many are able to convert those skills into jobs, businesses and improved livelihoods.
Abdullahi made the call while participating in a high-level panel session titled “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 boss joined Gabon’s ICT Minister, Mark Doumba, and OjiUdezue, a product leader and investor and former Chief Product Officer at Calendly and Typeform, at the session moderated by Joannes Paulus Yimbesalu, founder of Nanaade and Africa Skills Alliance and fellow, Social Innovation + Change Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School.
Abdullahi said Africa had “industrialised training” but had yet to industrialise the transition from training to productive work.
He identified three major barriers confronting young people moving from training into employment: the “trust gate,” where employers find it difficult to verify candidates’ capabilities; the “platform and connectivity gate,” caused by limited access to devices, affordable connectivity, reliable electricity and opportunities; and the “demand gate,” where the number of people entering the labour market far exceeds available formal jobs.
According to him, Nigeria is responding by linking digital literacy, advanced technical skills, connectivity, cloud infrastructure and job creation under a coordinated digital transformation agenda led 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.
The NITDA DG 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 for thousands of schools, healthcare facilities and local government offices, enabling digital talent developed outside major urban centres to participate more fully in the digital economy.
Abdullahi further distinguished between digital literacy and digital employability, saying both were important but served different purposes.
He said NITDA’s Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan (SRAP 2.0) is designed to equip Nigerians with basic digital capabilities needed to participate safely and confidently in the digital economy, while advanced programmes such as 3MTT are preparing young Nigerians for opportunities in artificial intelligence and machine learning, data science, software development, cloud computing and cybersecurity.
The NITDA boss, however, said Africa’s digital workforce strategy must go beyond formal employment, stressing the need to include traders, artisans, farmers, mechanics, transport operators, food vendors and other entrepreneurs.
He said digital skills should enable such groups to use smartphones productively, accept digital payments, market their businesses through social media, find customers and suppliers, maintain digital records, protect themselves against fraud, access digital services and deploy artificial intelligence tools to improve productivity.
Abdullahi said the key question should not only be whether an individual could secure a technology job, but whether technology could help that person increase income, reduce costs, reach more customers and operate a better business.
He urged policymakers and development partners to invest more in the transition from learning to earning, rather than focusing primarily on creating additional training programmes.
“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.
Abdullahi said NITDA would therefore measure the success of digital skills development not merely by the number of Nigerians trained, but by how many are able to translate digital capabilities into jobs, enterprises, higher productivity, increased income and meaningful participation in the digital economy.
