HoSF, NITDA Partner To Boost Nigeria’s Workforce With Digital Literacy

The Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (HoSF), in collaboration with the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has commenced a comprehensive project to equip Nigerian Civil servants with digital skills to modernise the Nigerian workforce.

This was the focus of the 3-day Digital Literacy Training and Certification Programme for the workforce, which commenced in Abuja on Monday. This programme is part of NITDA’s implementation of the “Digital Literacy for All” Initiative to achieve a 70% digital literacy level in Nigeria by 2027.

In her remarks during the workshop’s opening ceremony, the head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HoSF), Mrs Didi Esther Walson-Jack, said the initiative is geared towards “modernising the Nigerian civil service into a dynamic, technologically driven and globally competitive workforce.”

Represented by Permanent Secretary Career Management Office Fatima Mahmoud, the HoSF identified the urgency of equipping the workforce with relevant digital skills, stressing that “this will improve the country’s human capital development.”

She emphasised that the workshop will enhance capacity building and talent management, adding that it “aligns seamlessly with the National Digital Economy Strategy and Policy, which prioritises the development of a digitally secured workforce as a critical enabler of national growth and development in line with the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu’s administration”.

In his remarks, the Director General and CEO of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa, said the federal government’s economic diversification and transformation agenda cannot materialise without digital technology. He added that the Nigerian workforce constitutes the fulcrum that will provide digital solutions to citizens.

He said that NITDA’s collaboration with the Head of the service is to turn the civil servants into champions, stressing that the agency has the vision to make “Nigeria a digitally empowered nation fostering inclusive economic growth to move technological innovation.

“We have our strategic roadmap And action plan with eight strategic pillars. The first one is to foster digital literacy. To achieve this, we work with all stakeholders to develop the National  Digital Literacy Framework with an ambitious target of achieving 95%  digital literacy by 2030, and the president gave us a target to achieve 70% by 2027. Therefore, we devised an initiative called “Digital Literacy For All”.

Kashifu quoted the World Bank as saying that between 35 and 45% of the Nigerian workforce needs digital competency. That means all civil servants need to be digitally competent to fit in, adding that NITDA is also working with CISCO to develop the content for the civil servants.

“We want to enrol at least 2,000 civil servants every week, which means in a month we can do about 8,000, and with a workforce strength of about 69 000, we believe that if we can do 8,000 in a month in 9 months, we should be able to train the entire workforce,” he said.

The NITDA boss noted that his agency has been implementing this initiative in three areas. The first is with the Ministry of Education, which has developed a digital literacy and skills curriculum to infuse digital literacy into Nigeria’s formal education.

“We are working to train all teachers and collaborating with the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) and others to infuse it into all tertiary institutions. Before now, we have done a pilot with Nasarawa State University in collaboration with CISCO as well, which has helped to develop the content and certificates that are globally recognised, and now we are working with the National Universities Commission (NUC) to implement that across all the universities in Nigeria.

“We want you to be advocates of digital literacy. We aim to train over five million workers across the federal, state, and local governments and private sector because we want to develop our digital sector. We want every Nigerian to be able to navigate around the digital world safely and responsibly,” he said.

Also, Ikechukwu Ibeawuchi, from the Government Affairs of CISCO Nigeria, told LEADERSHIP in an interview that the firm has made the resources available through its network academy. This online platform enables participants to access training in different digital skill areas.