The Director General of Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa says the agency’s ambitious vision is to produce a thriving community of artificial intelligence (AI) developers in the country.
He spoke while receiving instructors and some beneficiaries of NITDA AI Developers Training (NAIDT) on a visit to NITDA in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city.
Inuwa was presented an award for his dedication to the AI training project.
The training organised by NITDA, through National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR), in conjunction with Google Developers Group (GDG), has created instructors, startups and secured job opportunities for participants.
The programme has recorded 1,227 beneficiaries across 10 cohorts, put through series of coaching clinics to develop programming skills in AI and Machine Learning (ML).
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He noted that NITDA has achieved what it set out to do during the pilot project in Abuja, and will be extended to other states.
According to Inuwa, the vision is to create a community of developers around the country where people can come and learn, and after that, they can teach others or start their businesses and impact society.
“I believe we can start with three states this year, then strategize on how we can take it to other states; with time, extend it to local governments because this is driven by my firm belief that in Nigeria, our most valuable asset as a nation is our human capital.
“I want to know how many people participated, and how many females, to ensure gender balance, and I want to know who and who have started businesses from this training and who and who are making money. This will help us to mentor others because the idea is not just to train people but after training, to connect them with jobs or to inspire and mentor them to start their own businesses” the NITDA Boss explained.
He added that the NAIDT platform can be used to create indigenous super apps like generative AI and language modeling, then a Proof-of-Concept (POC) can be done with NITDA and then escalated government-wide.
“This is because the government is also pushing for digitisation. Digitising government services will help the government save a lot of costs as well as improve the efficiency of service delivery.”
In his earlier remarks, the National Director of NCAIR, Ya’u Garba, said the project targets training of one million developers under the theme: ‘Learn, Teach, and Earn’, adding that there are three levels of training: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced.
“In the basics, we teach them what is necessary to become a good programmer, so we teach them Python; of course, you know Python is the language science. After that, most of them come back for the intermediate, where they are equipped with the necessary skills to start their journey in the IT world. Then we have the advance, which is problem-based for people that want to move forward,” said Garba.
According to representative of the Google Developers Group (GDG), Mr. Ibrahim Bright Muhammed, the training programme was done under “the environment [that] is very conducive, with very good internet.”
A number of the beneficiaries have transitioned from being trainees to becoming trainers.
