Director General (DG) of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Abdullahi, said human capital is the most valuable resource in building a non-dependent digital economy while stressing the need for digital literacy and skills.
He said Nigeria needs to be a digital sovereign state and build its indigenous digital content. He said this during a courtesy visit to Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)/Digital Transformation Centre (DTC) Nigeria office in Lagos yesterday.
He stated that the agency was taking steps to implement its strategic roadmap and action plan through developmental regulation, which involves creating an enabling environment for startups and micro, small and medium-scale enterprises (MSME).
“Regulation is not to stifle innovation but to influence the business, market and societal behaviour. Any regulation we implement has to create a market, enable innovation to protect consumers as well as improve service delivery,” he said.
He said digital transformation is a knowledge-based economy as one’s company or country is as good as its next product.
“We need to train our people and harness our talent to build our digital offerings in-country because technology hardly lasts more than a year. If you develop a system you have to update it within a year, therefore no country would survive on another country to provide its digital services,” he said.
