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The Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has challenged African policymakers and technology ecosystem leaders to shift the focus of digital-skills programmes from the number of people trained to how effectively those skills translate into jobs, businesses, productivity and improved livelihoods.
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Abdullahi made the call during a high-level panel on “Scaling Africa’s Digital Workforce”, held under the Digital Skills and Talent Session of “Nigeria at Scale: Building Digital Systems for Shared Prosperity” on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA81).
He was joined on the panel by Mark Doumba, ICT Minister of Gabon, and Oji Udezue, Product Leader and Investor and former Chief Product Officer at Calendly and Typeform. The session was moderated by Joannes Paulus Yimbesalu, Founder of Nanaade and Africa Skills Alliance and Fellow of the Social Innovation + Change Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School.
‘We Have Industrialised Training, Not the Transition’
Abdullahi said Africa’s digital workforce challenge is no longer simply about creating more training opportunities.
“We have industrialised training; we have not yet industrialised the transition,” he said.
He argued that greater attention must be given to the difficult journey between acquiring a certificate and securing productive work.
According to the NITDA DG, young people moving from training into the labour market face three major barriers: the trust gate, the platform and connectivity gate, and the demand gate.
The trust gate arises when employers struggle to verify whether applicants genuinely possess the skills they claim.
The platform and connectivity gate reflects the challenges created by inadequate access to devices, affordable connectivity, reliable electricity and digital opportunities.
The demand gate, meanwhile, reflects a structural imbalance in which the number of young people entering the labour market significantly exceeds the supply of formal employment opportunities.
Nigeria Connects Digital Skills to Jobs and Infrastructure
Abdullahi said Nigeria is seeking to address these challenges by connecting digital literacy, advanced technical training, connectivity, cloud infrastructure and job creation within a broader digital transformation agenda.
He cited the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme, which he said has trained more than 143,000 fellows across three cohorts.
The programme is complemented by a Talent Registry, designed to help connect verified digital capabilities with potential employers.
The approach, according to Abdullahi, is intended to address one of the fundamental problems confronting employers and digitally skilled young people: determining what candidates can actually do.
Verified credentials and stronger connections between talent and employers could therefore help narrow the gap between training and productive work.
Project BRIDGE Targets Wider Digital Participation
The NITDA chief also highlighted Project BRIDGE, which is envisioned to deploy at least 90,000 kilometres of open-access fibre and expand Nigeria’s national backbone to approximately 125,000 kilometres.
The initiative is expected to extend connectivity across all 774 Local Government Areas, linking thousands of schools, healthcare facilities and local government offices.
For Abdullahi, connectivity is a critical part of the digital workforce equation because skills developed outside Nigeria’s major urban centres can have limited economic value when people lack affordable and reliable access to digital platforms.
Expanding broadband infrastructure is therefore positioned as a means of allowing talent in smaller cities and rural communities to participate more fully in the digital economy.
Digital Literacy Is Not the Same as Digital Employability
A central point in Abdullahi’s intervention was the distinction between digital literacy and digital employability.
Through NITDA’s Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan (SRAP 2.0), basic digital literacy is intended to provide Nigerians with foundational capabilities to participate safely and confidently in the digital economy.
Advanced programmes such as 3MTT, however, target more specialised capabilities in areas including artificial intelligence and machine learning, data science, software development, cloud computing and cybersecurity.
The distinction matters because being able to use digital technology does not necessarily mean an individual is prepared for a technology-sector job.
At the same time, employability should not be defined exclusively by formal technology employment.
Africa’s Digital Workforce Goes Beyond Tech Jobs
Abdullahi argued that Africa’s digital workforce strategy must extend beyond people seeking conventional technology-sector employment.
Digital inclusion, he said, should also encompass traders, artisans, farmers, mechanics, transport operators, food vendors and other entrepreneurs whose livelihoods can be improved through technology.
For these groups, digital skills can mean using smartphones more productively, accepting digital payments, promoting products through social media, finding customers and suppliers, maintaining digital records, protecting against fraud, accessing online services and using artificial intelligence tools to improve productivity.
“The question is not, ‘Can this person get a technology job?’ It is, ‘Can technology help this person earn more, reduce costs, reach more customers and run a better business?’” Abdullahi said.
From Certificates to First-Paid Work
The NITDA DG’s intervention placed particular emphasis on the transition between learning and earning.
He called for greater investment in the mechanisms that help trained young people demonstrate their abilities, secure their first work opportunity and begin generating income.
“Fund the corridor, not another classroom, verifiable credentials and first-paid-work placement, because Africa’s young people are stuck in the gap between the certificate and the paycheck,” he said.
The argument shifts the focus of digital-skills investment from training capacity alone towards the entire pathway connecting learning, verification, opportunity, employment and income.
Measuring Digital Skills by Economic Impact
For NITDA, Abdullahi said, the ultimate measure of success should not simply be the number of Nigerians who complete training programmes.
The more consequential question is how many people are able to convert digital capabilities into employment, enterprise, higher productivity and increased income.
That approach also broadens the definition of Nigeria’s digital workforce. It includes not only software developers, data scientists, cybersecurity specialists and AI professionals, but also small-business owners and workers who use digital tools to make existing economic activities more productive.
As African economies expand their digital infrastructure and invest in technology skills, the challenge highlighted at the UNGA81 sidelines is increasingly about building the bridge between digital capability and economic opportunity.
