Tijani plans to train three million Nigerians in technical skills over four years, fostering economic growth and diversification.
Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, has declared that three million technically skilled Nigerians will receive training over the course of the next four years.
The Ministry’s goal is to increase productivity in key areas through technical innovation in order to accelerate the diversification of the Nigerian economy. Tijani introduced the new strategic blueprint, “Accelerating our Collective Prosperity through Technical Efficiency.”
The Ministry’s three main goals between 2023 and 2027 are to:
- Promote Nigeria’s development as a hub for technical talent worldwide and a talent exporter.
- strengthen and strengthen its standing in international research in important technical fields
- Boost the nation’s overall level of digital literacy to greatly increase the economy of Nigeria and its complexity and dynamics.
Training three million early- to mid-career technical talents over the course of the next four years is one of Nigeria’s primary objectives in the area of talent development. The Ministry states in the blueprint that core tech competencies, advanced proficiencies, and tech-enabled and tech-adjacent skills will all be covered in training.
Bosun Tijani promoted the strategy on LinkedIn. “Our blueprint has been carefully crafted based on extensive engagement with ministry stakeholders—departments, units, parastatals, ecosystem stakeholders, and my immediate team,” he said in the same piece. It is meant to be a dynamic document that describes our main focus areas as we develop ways to achieve them.
For the benefit of everyone, I am confident in our next steps as we implement this blueprint and follow President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope Agenda.”
The Ministry stated that if its talent training goal is met, it hopes to retain at least 1.5 million recently qualified tech professionals in its local talent pool and give another 1.5 million gifted people remote opportunities to succeed in the global talent market.
Nigeria’s digital transformation engine
Nigeria has also recognized the need to advance digital literacy. As it works to become a digitally inclusive nation, ensuring 95% digital literacy by 2030 is another important goal it is currently close to accomplishing.
With the help of this new tech-based strategic strategy, Nigerians’ lives will be considerably improved as the country aims to attain 70% of this target by 2027.
It is crucial that the nation does not ignore the deployment of necessary technology infrastructure in order to effectively spearhead digital transformation in the area. Nigeria launched its “National Broadband Plan” with the goal of increasing broadband penetration to 70% by the end of 2025 in order to make sure this is not the case. Given that the percentage was only 6% in 2015, the African nation’s current internet penetration rate of about 50% is impressive in and of itself.
Nigeria is planning to significantly upgrade its national core infrastructure, but it is also focused on future developing technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). According to Tijani’s vision, Nigeria aims to generate over 50,000 jobs in the AI sector by 2030, in keeping with its other policies.
The Ministry is also considering blockchain, and it intends to create programs to help blockchain technology be adopted and integrated into Nigeria’s digital economy. It hasn’t yet set clear success criteria, but eventually it hopes to accomplish things like boost the number of blockchain-based firms and the size and scope of government-sponsored blockchain initiatives.
