The Minister of Communication, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, says the overall target of one of the flagship programmes of his ministry is to create jobs for the teeming Nigerian youths.
The programme which is geared towards training three million technical talents in four years, according to Tijani, is to make Nigeria a net exporter of technology talents just like India.
“We want to make Nigeria a net exporter of technology talents and by net exporter, we don’t mean that people necessarily live abroad because within the technology space you can now work remotely,” Tijani said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Monday.
“I have been part of the tech space for the last 15 years as well. The current development in the tech startup space is being driven by less 10,000 technical talents. The almighty Andela which is a well-known startup that does training do not train up to 10,000 people in Nigeria, yet they have been quite successful in helping to strengthen that ecosystem.
“So, if where we are today is being built by less than 10,000, imagine when we train talents. Talent is the prerequisite for our digital economy. When we train people they can build, we can export. India did it, it is nothing new. India was the source of technology talents for many years, it is our time because we have everything it takes to be able to get there.”
The minister emphasised the need for the academic institutions in the country to participate in research which he said is an area the government is investing “heavily”.
He said in the first three months of coming into office, the ministry launched a research-funding scheme which has already funded 45 Artificial Intelligence projects.
Funding for Artificial Intelligence (AI) projects, he noted, is because AI is a technology that is coming at us significantly and if a government is not ready in about 12 or 15 months, people will start asking questions.
