The Director General of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, has given a clearer explanation on the reasons behind the introduction of Nigeria ICT Innovation and Entrepreneurship Vision (NIIEV).
The introduction followed President Muhammadu Buhari’s matching order to the agency at e-Nigeria 2017, where he charged NITDA to develop policies and strategies that will change Nigeria’s narrative from being a tech-consuming to a tech-producing country. To unlock our national potential, NITDA proposes a number of urgent measures to connect, educate and enable digital innovation.
In a statement issued by the Head, Corporate Affairs and External Relations, Mrs. Hadiza Umar, the DG revealed that NIIEV comprises of policy recommendations and incentives on the key components for building a technology ecosystem and are categorised into three themes.
The themes include Digital Infrastructure; Education Reform, skills Development and R&D; and supporting the Ecosystem for Innovative Entrepreneurship.
Business Hilights recalls that while hosting the maiden edition of the ICT Innovation and Entrepreneurship stakeholders meeting on the 31st October 2017, Dr Pantami averred that “The objective of the meeting was to collectively identify the challenges of stakeholders and identify strategies to address them for a thriving technology ecosystem. Several representatives from Government, Hubs, banks, investor networks, academia, media and technology entrepreneurs were in attendance”.
Currently, NITDA through its subsidiary, the Office for ICT Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIIE) has worked directly with entrepreneurs, hubs and hub networks to review the best practices across Africa and around the world to support digital transformation in Nigeria.
As part of the Agency’s rulemaking process, the document has been subjected to internal reviews by some key Government agencies where insightful feedback and updates were received.
In an effort to enrich the document and in line with the Agency’s policy of participatory regulation, industry stakeholders and the general public were invited to review the document through either of the following (i) on the consultation tool at https://niiev.ictinnovation.gov.ng (ii) via www.nitda.gov.ng and click important notice(iii) via facebookchatbot at http://m.me/ngrinnovationor simply send an email to info@ictinnovation.gov.ng.
All the portals for the review were open from 13thNovember 2018 to 27thNovember, 2018.
It would be recalled that NITDA is a Federal Government Agency established in April 2001 to implement the Nigerian Information Technology policy and coordinate general IT development and regulation in the country.
Specifically, Sections 6(h &i) of the Act mandate NITDA to create incentives to promote the use of information technology in all spheres of life in Nigeria including the development of guidelines for setting up of information technology systems and knowledge parks as well as introduce appropriate regulatory policies and incentives to encourage private sector investment in the information technology industry.
