The Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy has launched a digital portal and mobile app to help drive the country’s digital vision by providing a platform to empower Nigerians to develop relevant skills and build innovative solutions to address challenges within their community.
The portal http://www.digitalnigeria.gov.ng and the ‘Digital Nigeria’ Mobile App, according to supervising Minister, Dr. Isa Pantami, are to enable Nigerians to acquire high-level digital skills from the comfort of their homes.
The minister said the government is committed to developing the capacity of Nigerians to use technology to solve problems, promising to keep updating the course offerings on the platform to reflect global trends, adding that a step by step procedure for using the platforms will be available on the website and social media pages.
“We will regularly update the platform to include more courses from time to time. It will enable us to identify skilled Nigerians for additional capacity-building opportunities and allow us to easily conduct surveys to identify courses of interest. Students will receive a certificate of completion after completing the courses”.
The Digital Nigeria Programme will provide a National Platform for improving the digital literacy of Nigerians and it will enable Nigerians from all walks of life to acquire high-level digital skills, and it will have a strong emphasis on Skills for Jobs and will include Nigerians in all strata of society, such as youth, women, children, internally displaced persons, people living with disabilities, Pantami said.
” We are championing a paradigm shift that lays emphasis on skills, in preference to merely having degrees without skills. Degrees are only meant to validate skills.
“This is a growing trend across the globe. For instance, China recently started the process of turning 600 of the country’s general universities into skill centres.
“Also, the President of the United States of America signed an Executive Order on the 26th of June 2020 directing the federal government lay emphasis on skills rather than degrees when hiring staff and the curriculum vitae of today should have 2 main parts- soft skills and hard skills”, he said
The training content covers areas like Digital Skills, Productivity Tools, Web Development, Cloud Computing, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Database Administration, Networking, Programming, and Internet of Things.
There is also training on soft skills like entrepreneurship, research, marketing, business, and how to create excellent resumes, such that a wide spectrum of users, from beginners to advanced students, can find appropriate courses.
Some of the other objectives for launching these platforms according to Pantami include:
.Empowering innovators and entrepreneurs with skills required to thrive in Nigeria’s emerging digital economy;
.Providing capacity building in a wide range of areas, including Digital Literacy, Productivity Tools, Web Development, Cloud Computing, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Database Administration, networking, Programming, Internet of Things, and Soft Skills
.Creating a platform to support a paradigm shift from degrees to skills and bridge the gap between the academia and industry;
.Promoting the development and distribution of instructional materials in electronic format
. And creating an enabling environment for building the capacity of Innovation Driven Enterprises (IDEs) and Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) through e-learning channels.
Pantami said the launch Digital Nigeria Portal and Mobile App is part of the implementation of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) for Digital Nigeria.
Some of the ministry’s partners at the launch are the African Development Bank (AfDB) and Microsoft, represented by Ebrima Faal, Senior Director, Nigeria Country Department, AfDB, and Ghada Khalifa, Director for the Middle East and Africa, Microsoft Philanthropies, respectively.
The minister said the journey towards developing Nigeria’s Digital Economy commenced when Mr. President approved the request of redesignation of the Federal Ministry of Communications as the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, along with an upgrade of the mandate, on the 17th of October 2019.
According to Pantami, the development of our National Digital Economy is anchored on the following 8 pillars as stated in NDEPS, which are: developmental regulation, digital literacy and skills, solid infrastructure, service infrastructure, digital services development and promotion, soft infrastructure, digital society, and emerging technologies and indigenous content development and adoption.
He said since the implementation of NDEPS his ministry has resolved the lingering issues of excessive Right of Way charges and vandalism of telecommunication infrastructure and as achieved rapid broadband penetration, with an increase by about 10% in 11 months (with a value of 42.02% at the end of July 2020), instead of the average annual increase of about 1.7%.
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