The Director-General/CEO of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, CCIE, has called for a fundamental shift in Africa’s digital workforce strategy, urging policymakers to focus less on the number of people trained and more on how digital skills translate into jobs, businesses, productivity and improved livelihoods.
Abdullahi made the call while participating in a high-level panel on “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 session featured the ICT Minister of Gabon, H.E. Mark Doumba, and Oji Udezue, Product Leader and Investor and former Chief Product Officer at Calendly and Typeform. It was moderated by Joannes Paulus Yimbesalu, Founder of Nanaade and Africa Skills Alliance and Fellow, Social Innovation + Change Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School.
According to a statement by the Director of Corporate Communications and Media Relations, Hajiya Hadiza Umar, on Wednesday, Abdullahi said Africa had made significant progress in digital training but had yet to build equally effective systems for moving trained individuals into productive economic activity.
“We have industrialised training; we have not yet industrialised the transition,” he said.
According to him, three major barriers continue to hinder the transition from digital training to employment and enterprise: the “trust gate,” where employers face difficulties verifying applicants’ capabilities; the “platform and connectivity gate,” involving inadequate access to devices, affordable connectivity, reliable power and opportunities; and the “demand gate,” where the number of people entering the labour market far exceeds available formal jobs.
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He said Nigeria was responding by linking digital literacy, advanced technical skills, connectivity, cloud infrastructure and job creation under a coordinated digital transformation agenda being implemented by NITDA and the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy.
Abdullahi 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 capabilities with employers.
He 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.
The initiative, he said, would improve connectivity for thousands of schools, healthcare facilities and local government offices, while creating opportunities for digital talent outside major urban centres to participate in the digital economy.
The NITDA DG stressed that digital literacy and digital employability should not be treated as the same objective.
He explained that NITDA’s Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan (SRAP 2.0) is designed to provide Nigerians with basic digital capabilities needed to participate safely and confidently in the digital economy, while advanced programmes such as 3MTT equip young people with specialised skills in artificial intelligence and machine learning, data science, software development, cloud computing and cybersecurity.
Abdullahi also urged African countries to look beyond formal employment when designing digital workforce policies, noting that technology could significantly improve the livelihoods of traders, artisans, farmers, mechanics, transport operators, food vendors and other entrepreneurs.
For such groups, he said, digital skills should translate into practical benefits, including the ability to use smartphones productively, accept digital payments, market goods and services online, find customers and suppliers, maintain digital records, protect against fraud, access digital services and deploy artificial intelligence tools to improve productivity.
“The question is not, ‘Can this person get a technology job?’ It is, ‘Can technology help this person earn more, reduce costs, reach more customers and run a better business?’” he said.
Abdullahi therefore called for greater investment in the transition between learning and earning, particularly through verifiable credentials and pathways to first paid work.
“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.
He maintained that the ultimate measure of Africa’s digital workforce initiatives should not simply be the number of people trained, but the number able to convert digital capabilities into employment, enterprise, higher productivity, increased income and meaningful participation in the digital economy.