TECHDIGEST – In its continuous approach to create fair and inclusive societies that provide equal opportunities through various programmes, projects, and policies, the Federal Government through the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), organised ICT Stakeholders’ Engagement programme in Ilorin, Kwara State, in order to give stakeholders an opportunity to express their views and opinions on matters related to the Agency’s implementation of its mandate.

The Participants, including ICT experts, Government Representatives, Academia, Startup ecosystems, ICT Associations, Technology Solution Providers, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), and relevant stakeholders in the Digital Economy Sector shared ideas on how Kwara IT ecosystem should take advantage of the various opportunity and platforms being provided by NITDA to upskill, connect and build a robust network that will facilitate gainful collaboration among all stakeholders

Kashifu Inuwa CCIE, Director General of NITDA, who was represented by Director, Zonal Offices Directorate, Mr Babajide Ajayi, said that the Stakeholders’ Engagement is a veritable platform to pool knowledge, experience, and expertise, and to co-create solutions, articulate strategies, and extend our services to all stakeholders, especially at the grassroots.

He said, “Throughout the twenty-one-year journey of the Agency, we have had to look continuously at our mandate, reset our vision, and invigorate our mission. We have moved from being a highly centralised organisation to a functionally decentralised Institution. Our aspiration is to be an Organisation closer to the stakeholders.”

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We are also increasingly becoming a process-driven, data-dependent, and results-oriented Organisation. Our strategies and choices are pursued while always ensuring financial prudence – even in the most turbulent times and ensuring that we meet the objectives of a national IT Governance, foremost of which is delivering value to our stakeholders. 

“These are in tandem with our core values of People First, Innovativeness, and Professionalism. Indeed, that is why we are here today. Our stakeholders come first, and we must strive to deliver value to you. That would not be possible without listening to you and speaking with you to get clarity on your perspectives, aspirations, and needs, he added.

Speaking on the Agency’s people-oriented programmes, Inuwa said, “under the supervision of Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and stakeholders, we have implemented programmes such as National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA), National Adopted School for Smart Education (NASSE), Digital Literacy Capacity Training for Persons Living with Disabilities, support for ICT Innovation Hubs, building of Community IT Centres, development State IT policies, and a host of other activities.”

He said as the needs of the Digital Economy Ecosystem grow; the Agency has striven to respond appropriately. This has been demonstrated in the strategic actions the Agency has taken in the implementation of critical areas of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS).

“We are aware that we still have a lot to do. Therefore, we are committed to making further progress over the coming year, and we look forward to the continued support of all our stakeholders,” he concluded.

On his part, the Commissioner for Business Innovation and Technology, Honourable Ibrahim Ajake, stated that the role of Digital Platform in entrepreneurship evolution cannot be overemphasised

He added that digitalisation changes the economics of doing business across border, bringing down the cost of international interaction and transaction. According to him, updated digital entrepreneurship knowledge and dynamics is one of the major ways Nigerian entrepreneurs can upscale their potentials in the global market.

“Digital evolution creates markets and user communities with global scale, providing business with huge base of potential customers and effective ways to reach them.”

“I am confident that the stakeholder’s engagement meeting will be of immense value to the ICT inclined public and keep abreast with necessary opportunity to enhance market access in order to tap into the foreign exchange earnings,” he noted.

He therefore urged participants to interact with experienced resource personnel and contemporaries to be equipped with various knowledge needed for optimal output.

“My sincere gratitude goes to NITDA and all the stakeholders for organising this event, and I assure you that all deliberations and contributions at this programme will serve as strength to us in the Ministry.

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TECHDIGEST – The youth of this nation keep complaining of being excluded in the affairs of the Nation. Some of them are of the belief that if the mantle of leadership of this great nation is handed over to the youth, things would be better for the country, we would have developed far beyond what we are witness as a nation today.

To be fair to Buhari administration, even though the president is of the older generation, there are many young people today being given opportunities either through elective offices or appointments. The question is, have they made a good representation of their class that would warrant their fellow youth to take their performances as a ticket for securing their own ambition of leading the nation in the near future?

Some analysts who are the opponents of total youth political leadership are of the opinion that the youth still have a long way to go considering the performances of some of their class that were given opportunities as a case study in preparation of them taking over the mantle of leadership but performed below average.

In my own assessment, I can conveniently say, all hope is not lost looking at the present situation, there are few youth that are recording huge successes in their fields of assignments that their fellow young ones can use their scorecards to demand for what they think is theirs for the take.

One such person is Malam Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, the Director General of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) who in his two years of being the Head Of NITDA has recorded a massive successes that can make every young person proud of these great achievements by the young man.

I assure you that this space won’t be enough to exhaust all the achievements of Malam Kashifu in NITDA in two years as highlighted by Mubarak Umar of the same agency, so I will bring few out of what I read with the hope that more will be assessed through other means.

In these two years, Abdullahi proved to the world that he knows the ICT global terrain deeply and he is very aware of the challenges, limitations and constraints keeping Nigeria – a nation of about 200 million lagging behind in the evolving world of digital economy. Against all odds that face Nigeria’s IT sector, Kashifu has an indefatigable vision and passion to take the nation into the comity of nations running on digital economy.

The Agency set out strategies to digitize government functions and processes and it successfully created over 150 user accounts to enable Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) submit their IT projects through the agency’s IT projects clearance portal, licensed of 94 Data Protection Compliance Organizations (DPCOs), and of Nigeria Government Enterprise Architecture/Nigeria e-Government Interoperability Framework (NGEa-Ne-GIF).

Under Kashifu’s watch, NITDA has developed several regulatory frameworks for information technology development, which most of them have been published both on soft copy and hard copy by the Agency.

The Standards, Guidelines and Frameworks developed by NITDA include: Nigeria Government Enterprise Architecture (NGEA); Public Private Partnership regulatory framework for ICT and eGovernment projects; Government Digital Service Framework (GDSFrame); National Block Chain Adoption Strategy Document; Nigeria Digital Agriculture Strategy (NDAS-2020-2030); Business Process Management Guide for Federal Public Institutions (FPIs); Management System Guidelines for Federal Public Institutions (FPIs); Government Digital Transformation Performance (Readiness) Assessment Toolkit (GDT-PAT); and eGovernment Masterplan and Digital Transformation for Jigawa, Nasarawa and Ogun States, to mention a few.

To drive these initiatives, the Agency set up an ICT Technical Working Groups in MDAs to enable the adoption of Ne-GIF, NGEA and other related initiatives to drive ICT, e-Government and made a mandatory ICT Capacity Building for staff of MDAs. It organised Capacity Building and Certification of 442 Digital Transformation Technical Working Group (DT-TWGs) members drawn from different Federal Public Institutions (FPIs).

Furthermore, during these two years, Kashifu continued from where his predecessor stopped in unfolding potential Nigerian farmers through Federal Government initiative of National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA), to change the face of agric sector in the country.

National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture is an ecosystem-driven digital platform envisioned for the transformation of the agriculture sector in Nigeria. It is designed to help farmers and other agricultural ecosystem players navigate their journey across the agriculture value chain. This journey cuts across farm production to management, processing, harvesting, storage, marketing and consumption. 565 farmers were trained and empowered with digital devices and N100, 000 seeds funding, which also created jobs direct and indirect jobs in the country.

NITDA also launched the National Adopted School for Smart Education (NASSE) to promote digital literacy and skills among students with 500 students and 30 teachers at Junior Secondary School Karshi benefited from the pilot scheme. The Agency supervised training of a total number of 1,858 Artisans across the 6 Geo-Political Zones on digital literacy and phone repairs.

The Agency also conducted training for 200 women on ICT and Entrepreneurship, each provided with Laptops (pre-installed e-learning & graphics Software), Internet Dongles & Bag-Packs, 1200 direct jobs and 3000 indirect jobs were created; it further graduated 300 Nigerians on Software, Mobile App & Web Development, and Entrepreneurship. People Living with Disabilities were also not left behind, as NITDA trained 30 and 52 persons in Kano and Enugu respectively, and laptops were giving to them as working tools.

In addition to making an effort in IT development as well as enhancing the IT capacity of the citizenry, hundreds of IT Hubs, IT Parks, and Community ICT Centres were either deployed, furnished or equipped with world class facilities across the states of the country.

On cybersecurity, NITDA conducted five (5) incidents analysis affecting National ICT infrastructure, handled 34 hacking of MDAs’ websites, 15 ENDSARS hacking attempts resolved, 10 defacement of MDAs’ websites handled, and dark web monitoring 15 incidents handled.

The Agency, under the supervision of its mother Ministry, launched NITDA Academy for Research and Training (NART) with 67 plus active courses, 58227 plus active students and 55,539 plus active training sessions.

To ensure Nigeria’s pool of talents was not left behind, the Agency Established National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotic (NCAIR), NITDA aims through NCAIR, to drive and support the research, development, and adoption of Emerging Technologies in Nigeria.

The Centre is creating the required environment for Nigeria’s teaming youths; encourage innovation and indigenisation of technologies to help address the continuous reliance on foreign products and services which has negative impact on the country’s economy. It serves as a bridge between the Government, industry, and the academia in providing research environment for creativity, idea integration, collaborative environment, development of ICT policies, processes and strategies.

As a result of Kashifu’s commitment, Nigeria made history when it received Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), during the handover ceremony of Root Certification Authority (RCA) for Country Signing Certification Authority (CSCA) and Country Verification Certification Authority (CVCA) of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

With the strategy already in place, the Agency has succeeded in programming, developing and mapping out digital process to cushion the effect of Coronavirus since it is outbreak globally; Nigeria COVID19 Innovation Challenge, an online innovation challenge that was set up to meet the challenges our society was, and still facing as a result of COVID-19 pandemic. Developers, entrepreneurs and other creative minds joined to experiment and build software solutions to help address this crisis, received overwhelming applicants in Nigeria.

Though, considering the vast technology expertise possessed by the DG, Nigerians always ask why Kashifu Inuwa has such intellectual prowess which makes him an extraordinary Chief Executive in discharging his duties in the last two years as Director General, NITDA.

Based on the above, it is not wonder that when Zuma Times in its preparations for its upcoming speech and award day decided to publish a magazine of 100 Top Personalities and allowed their followers who are mostly youth to nominate and Kashifu name was constantly nominated.

The committee that is sandled with the responsibility of picking special 30, also picked Malam Kashifu as one of their top pick.

Also the management and staff of the company are of the opinion that Kashifu will be in the best position to do justice to this year’s theme of the speech on Security and Technology as so sent their request to the D.G who accepted humbly.

On behalf of Zuma Times staff and management we congratulate Nigerian Youth for having someone that earnestly represent them in giving them hope to achieving their long time ambition of leading the nation to the promised land.

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TECHDIGEST – It was not startlingly surprising when Dr. Isa Ali Pantami, on one of his official sojourn to Mallam Kashifu Inuwa’s hometown, did a public eulogy of the NITDA Boss as one of the most inquisitive, determined, and honest persons he has effaced in his sojourn as a public figure. This encouraged the Honourable Minister to recommend Kashifu to the President as a befitting figure to head NITDA spearheading IT operations under the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy.

Kashifu has efficiently headed NITDA for two graceful years, and at this point, it is important that we retrospect on his strides borne out of his application of experiential know-how coupled with sterling leadership since resumption of office. After graduating from the renowned Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Kashifu furthered to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – MIT; a world-class institution famed for her vast repository of tech training and knowledge.

After graduating cum laude with a Masters in IT operations, business transformation and solution architecture, he proceeded to arm himself with professional certifications to deepen his technical expertise and broaden his individual capacity from the Harvard University, the University of Cambridge, and IMD Business School respectively.

Asides his stellar strides in the classroom, he has exemplified his technical expertise in public and private capacities including but not limited to; the Central Bank of Nigeria [CBN], Galaxy Backbone, IP Operations team, where he championed numerous projects aimed at helping the society at large.

Hence, leading NITDA in this graceful and glorious manner should be no subject of surprise, but candid appraisal of his strides since resumption of office is important in order to inspire other agency heads in the country about the prospects and potentials hidden in Nigeria as a whole; especially in the IT sector.

In just two years of taking over from where Dr. Isa Ali Pantami stopped, Kashifu Inuwa has made notable strides especially in the aspect of positioning the agency as an inextricable player in the IT sector of the country. Most recently, the agency, under Kashifu’s authority has kick-started capacity development programs on e-governance and digital infrastructure for executive members of all states in Nigeria and has began the execution of this program in Kano state, Nigeria.

Also, under the able leadership of Kashifu, the launch of the Nigerian National Public Key Infrastructure has seen the light of the day. The NITDA Strategic Road Map and Action Plan 2021–2024 which is in line with the digital economy policy and strategy for a digital Nigeria that was launched at the 20th anniversary of the agency has also been on high rise.

In addition, the spike in the contribution of ICT to the nation’s gross GDP from 0.5% in 2001 to about 14% in 2020 which has paved ways for innovative creations in the sector is all thanks to policies implemented by Kashifu’s office in conjunction with the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy at large. In the same light, with programs like the Digital State Initiative, the National Adopted School For Smart Education (NASSE), among other programmes that have catered to the capacity development of the country’s young population, the Digital Nigeria dream keeps inching closer to actualization.

To augment aforementioned contributions, the agency has continually distributed digital gadgets and equipment to the Nigerian populace and NGOs inclusive, and consistently equipped and funded digital economy centers situate in all states of the country. This has birthed pioneer sterling projects like the creation of a National Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, first of its kind in the country, to oversee the harness of the largess of potentials the AI industry can bring to the country. Also, The National Policy on Virtual Engagement in the Public Service has witnessed smooth execution.

It will be herculean to detail the strides of Mallam Kashifu Inuwa as the Chairman of the NITDA in just one writing. As a loyal protégé of Dr. Isa Ali Pantami, Mallam Kashifu has proven time and over that quality leadership is not impossible with the right people in the right positions, which has positioned him as the subject recipient of numerous awards from various fronts. Most recently, The Northern Youth Council of Nigeria tagged him as the “Icon of Humanitarian Service,” an Award of excellence as SDG Humanitarian Icon of Societal Transformation, the Blueprint Public Service Award, among others that testify to the excellence of Kashifu Inuwa.

There is hope!

Adamu Usman Garko writes from the city of Gombe State.

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TECH DIGEST – The 5G technology is driving the world towards the 4th Industrial Revolution and it is strategic to bringing people together within a global village, Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mallam Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, remarked as a panelist at the Virtual Digital Africa Conference and Exhibition 2021. The panel focused on the evolution of 5G networks and Internet of things (IoT) in Africa.

Abdullahi said his agency, in its Strategic Road Map and Action Plan 2021-2024, has identified the importance of promoting and exploiting emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and IoT among others. NITDA is a critical player under the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy that is committed to implementing the Nigerian Digital Economic Policy and Strategy (NDEPS).

“In that policy, there is need to develop a digital Nigeria by exploiting emerging technologies,” said Abdullahi who was represented by the Ag. Director, Digital Economic Development department of the agency, Salisu Kaka.

He added: Promotion of emerging technologies will create more jobs and improve the economy of the country. There are deliberate attempts to set up mechanisms that will coordinate these emerging technologies, which will lead to the engagement of the society, especially the youth, innovators and the entrepreneurs.”

He stressed the importance of engaging this particular group of people because they are the direct beneficiaries of the enormous data generated by the IoT, 5G technologies and Big Data Analytics.

According to him, NITDA has set up the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence as well as the Office of Nigerian Digital Innovation which will both create enabling environments that will allow exploration of these technologies and ensure effective use.

Abdullahi stated further those innovations come with disruptions of normal processes, making it imperative to come up with regulations. He said that the government’s responsibility is to ensure that policy provisions are put in place to ensure inclusion of private business owners. “Private business owners don’t exploit where there is no potential, so, it is important for government to put in place interventions that will be attractive” the NITDA boss added.

NITDA developed an initiative called ‘National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA)’ with the aim of bringing emerging technologies, such as the IoT and the 5G technology into the agricultural sector.

“We piloted this initiative in 2019 and 2020 and it has given great results”, Abdullahi stated. He further disclosed that another initiative; the ‘National Adopted Schools for Smart Education (NASSE)’, was launched by the agency with the aim of incorporating these emerging technologies into the educational sector as well, and expanding the potentials of the sector.

Abdullahi said the regulatory approach adopted by the agency, which is a developmental regulation, is essential in creating a level playing field for business regulations where these emerging technologies will be effectively utilized in a way that makes government to achieve economic diversification.

His words: “In NITDA, we have refocused our process of making these policies user friendly, because it encourages participation of the private sector and the society, towards the development of these regulatory provisions for the 5G technology and other emerging technologies, which is why we refer to it as developmental regulations.”

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