The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, on Monday disclosed that Nigeria’s digital economy had attracted about $4.4 billion investments over the past four years.
Inuwa gave this hint at a media chat organized by the Ministry of Women Affairs with the theme ‘DigitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality’ to commemorate the 2023 International Women’s Day in Abuja.
The NITDA’s boss, who was represented at the forum by his Special Assistant on Strategy and Innovation, Mrs. Iklima Salihu, partly attributed the growing investment to the agency’s implementation of strategic programmes and initiatives targeted at boosting the sector’s growth.
Noting that equal gender opportunities hold great potential for the growth of the nation’s digital economy, Inuwa, who cited some statistics from the Council on Foreign Affairs to support this position, projected that the country could add up to $230 billion to its GDP growth by year 2025 if women were given opportunities to participate in all sub-sectors of the digital economy.
To achieve this feat, he explained that the agency was implementing sundry initiatives, including the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS), as part of the efforts to reduce the gender gap by ensuring that women, children, internally displaced persons and the physically challenged benefit from all its digital skills capacity building programmes.
He said: “In fulfillment of this strategy, we have taken many steps to drive our nation’s prosperity by boosting digital innovation for women, creating an enabling environment that maximizes the potential of all Nigerian women, promoting their ability to contribute to the economy, and ensuring their improved quality of life and well-being.”
Inuwa also listed some of the key initiatives of the agency to support technology innovation as including the Technology Entrepreneurship and Innovation Support Scheme (TIES), the Idea Hatch (iHatch); Bridge to MassChallenge Nigeria and MIT-REAP which, he said, had assisted in the establishment of a vibrant innovation ecosystem and creation of over 33,500 direct and indirect jobs in 2020.
The NITDA’s boss also disclosed that in furtherance of the agency’s efforts to promote digital literacy among women, the agency organized a capacity building programmes on ICT and entrepreneurship for 360 women across the country.
