The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has drawn up a comprehensive digital literacy training programme for 50 million Nigerians by 2027.
The Director-General of NITDA, Malam Kashifu Inuwa, disclosed this in Abuja shortly after the end of the 2025 Digital Nigeria Conference organised by the Agency at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.
He said President Bola Tinubu has approved the accelerated implementation of the programme to pave the way for the socio-economic transformation of the country.
Inuwa said the training programme, which is being implemented in three buckets together with critical stakeholders, would recalibrate Nigeria’s digital journey and ecosystems to boost Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and ensure that citizens benefit maximally from the digital economy ecosystems.
The NITDA boss, who spoke with reporters, said, “We are building our target to reach 70% by training 50 million Nigerians by 2027. And we are doing it in three buckets. Firstly, we’ve worked with the Ministry of Education.
“We have developed a curriculum for digital literacy and skills. And the president has approved its implementation. Now we are training teachers across the country on how to start teaching digital literacy and skills in all our schools, from kindergarten to tertiary institutions.
“We’ve done pilot programmes with some universities, making digital literacy a general study in universities, the same way we take the English language.
“Then the second bucket is that we are working with the Head of Civil Service of the Federation to train all public servants. So far, we have more than 30,000 public civil servants enrolled in our digital literacy training platform.
“We are doing the same thing with states. Some states have already domesticated our digital literacy framework within their system. So we are partnering with them to train all workers.
“Then we have the informal sector, where we are partnering with the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC. We have already created a CDA group under NYSC, where we recruit champions in NYSC camps. So, NYSC has three batches and six streams in a year.
“So we recruit 80 champions in each stream in all states, plus the FCT. That means each state will have 80 times six champions. That’s 460 champions in a year.
“Then we give each champion a target, at least to train two people on basic digital literacy every day. Then, in a month, the target is to train 60. In a year, we want every champion to train 600.
“So when you multiply 460, that’s the number of champions in a state, times 37, you get 16,760 champions in a year across the country. When you multiply that by 600, you will get 10,300,000 plus. That means in a year, we’ll train 10,300,000 plus.
“In three years, we’ll train 30 million. In the education sector, we are targeting 50 million because when you introduce digital literacy in our formal education, we have more than 50 million students in Nigeria. So we are targeting 50 million, making it 45 million, and we are targeting 5 million in the workforce.
“So putting it together, our target is 50 million. And when we achieve that target, we’ll move from 50% to 70% digital literacy level by 2027”
Speaking on the success of the Conference, Malam Inuwa explained that 25 states actively participated in the conference, while it recorded 4,400 participants altogether from 12 countries across the globe.
He said the conference addressed issues of building infrastructures to connect the unconnected and ensure all citizens are brought on board the digital economic space, while adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) also dominated discussions during the programme.
“We also have a track on artificial intelligence and emerging technologies because technology is disrupting our lives, everything we do. So we need to position ourselves because this technology is not going to replace you and I, but it will replace the skills we have and also the way we do our work.
“So how can we position ourselves as a country to harness and benefit from these emerging technologies,” the Director General said.
