NITDA partners with SI Group on digitization, youth empowerment

Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has expressed readiness to partner with the SI Group & Beyond Mentors in areas that include digitization and youth empowerment.

Director-General of NITDA, Kachifu Inuwa expressed this readiness during a recent courtesy visit to the agency in Abuja by a team led by founder/CEO of SI Group of Social Enterprise, Khadijah Abdullahi Iya.

The NITDA boss said strategic partnerships to scale impact and strengthen engagement in the public and private sectors for building capacity on literacy and skills have become necessary.

He also noted that digitizing or digitisation needed to be well managed so that cultures, values and identity that define countries, organisation or individuals are not eroded.

“In Africa, there is a troubling scenario playing out in the gaming world where we don’t depict African characters, our core values, cultures into games; this is not the way to go. We need to train our youths on animation and visual arts so that they can create characters that would reflect the thoughts and views of Africans,” Abdullahi said.

“NITDA has remained committed to piloting Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Support Scheme(s) where startups are taken from ideas conceptualisation point to hatching and commercialisation”, noted Abdullahi, even as he noted the agency’s equal commitment to building the ecosystem via NITDA’s principle of co-creation under which the agency in 2022 alone was able to train over 600 Nigerian across the six geopolitical zones.

His words: “One of our mantras is the fact that we cannot succeed in isolation, which is why we welcome key collaborators in order for us to co-create and build the desired ecosystem.

“Innovation as you know does not happen in isolation, hence, there is need to always sought out the main players in the ecosystem to work together. We work with international, national and local organisations.”

Earlier, Iya, had stressed that her organisation came visiting to identify shared values and explore areas of partnership with the agency.