The Director-General/Chief Executive Officer of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has called for a fundamental shift in Africa’s digital workforce strategy from simply training young people to creating pathways that convert digital skills into jobs, businesses and improved livelihoods.
Abdullahi made the call while participating in a high-level panel session titled “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 NITDA chief executive, who joined Gabon’s Minister of ICT, H.E. Mark Doumba, and Oji Udezue, Product Leader and Investor and former Chief Product Officer at Calendly and Typeform, said the continent had made significant progress in expanding digital training but needed to pay greater attention to what happens after training.
Abdullahi, during the discussion moderated by Joannes Paulus Yimbesalu, Founder of Nanaade and Africa Skills Alliance and Fellow of the Social Innovation + Change Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School, stated: “We have industrialised training; we have not yet industrialised the transition.”
He identified three major barriers confronting young people moving from digital training into productive work: the trust gate, where employers find it difficult to verify candidates’ capabilities; the platform and connectivity gate, involving inadequate access to devices, affordable connectivity, reliable electricity and opportunities; and the demand gate, where the number of people entering the labour market far exceeds available formal employment opportunities.
Abdullahi said Nigeria was responding by integrating digital literacy, advanced technical skills, connectivity, cloud infrastructure and job creation as interconnected components of its digital transformation agenda.
He 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 skills with employers.
The NITDA DG 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 the ultimate goal of reaching all 774 Local Government Areas.
According to him, expanded connectivity will support access to digital opportunities for Nigerians outside major urban centres and extend the benefits of the digital economy to schools, healthcare facilities and local government offices.
He further distinguished between digital literacy and digital employability, explaining that while NITDA’s Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan (SRAP 2.0) seeks to equip Nigerians with foundational digital capabilities, advanced initiatives such as 3MTT are designed to prepare young people for specialised opportunities in artificial intelligence and machine learning, data science, software development, cloud computing and cybersecurity.
Abdullahi stressed that Africa’s digital workforce strategy must also look beyond conventional formal employment and address the needs of traders, artisans, farmers, mechanics, transport operators, food vendors and other entrepreneurs.
He said technology should enable such groups to use smartphones productively, accept digital payments, market their products through social media, connect with customers and suppliers, maintain digital records, protect themselves from 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.
The NITDA DG therefore called for greater investment in the transition between learning and earning, stressing that Africa’s digital transformation should focus on verifiable credentials and pathways to first paid work rather than concentrating solely on expanding training capacity.
He concluded: “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.”
For NITDA, Abdullahi said, the ultimate measure of success should be how many Nigerians are able to translate digital capabilities into jobs, enterprise, higher productivity, increased income and meaningful participation in the digital economy.
