The director-general, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mallam Kashifu Abdullahi has touted Nigeria as having a competitive advantage to continue positioning itself as the global talent factory in technology, sports, music and movie industries.
He made this known when he received the chief executive officer of Outsource Global, Ms. Amal Hassan on a courtesy visit to the agency’s corporate headquarters in Abuja.
The visit was part of moves to for a partnership with NITDA in digital economic policies and initiatives and to work with NITDA to actualise the rebranding of the country.
While assuring the team of the agency’s maximum cooperation, Abdullahi noted that NITDA is one of the Federal Government’s agencies in charge of implementing National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS).
According to him, the agency wishes to partner with Outsource Global in achieving the needed result in Nigeria’s digital space.
He reminded the visitors that NITDA was established in 2001 to help with the integration of IT into Nigeria’s system noting that at that time, less than 500,000 Nigerians have access to computers with ICT’s contribution to the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) less than 0.5 per cent.
However, today, Abdullahi posited that more than 100 million Nigerians have access to the internet and computers because “our mobile phones are computers, thanks to the improved contribution of ICT to the GDP at 18.44 per cent (almost twice the 8 per cent contributed by oil and gas).”
He added that NITDA was calibrating to transform the agency and the sector to position Nigeria in the global digital economy map, create and capture value and become the superpower in digital economy.
The NITDA boss identified outsourcing as the greatest idea for critical stakeholders people with the influential mindset to listen and look into collectively making Nigeria a strong digital economy. Working with the tech ecosystem and listening to them would help stimulate the growth of the tech ecosystem.
“To believe in the ecosystem, everyone has his role and responsibilities and the government’s responsibility is to intervene in terms of infrastructure, policies and regulations,” he added.
Abdullahi reiterated that Nigeria has a bright future when in business process outsourcing.
Earlier in her remarks, the CEO of Outsource Global, Amal Hassan and her counterpart, Ben Faes described the visit as “timely”, considering the warm reception and ideas-sharing on the partnership with NITDA.
Hassan underscored the importance of outsourcing as a subsector that offers employment opportunities to thousands of people globally.
She concluded that Outsourcing Global would tap from NITDA’s wealth of experience to rebrand Nigeria and make it a world-class ICT destination.
