FG Mulls Inclusion Of Digital Literacy In Education Curriculum
By Sunday Etuka, Abuja
The Federal Government has hinted on plans to include digital literacy in the nation’s education curriculum, in its quest to achieve 70 percent digital literacy by 2027 and 95 percent by 2030.
The Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa who dropped the hint on Wednesday in Abuja said, it was part of the agency’s Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan (2024-2027).
“We are working with the Ministry of Education to review the curriculum across the formal education, from nursery to university so that we can infuse digital literacy in our formal education and by doing that, we can empower Nigerians to have digital skills before graduating,” Inuwa said.
He added that the Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan was crafted to uplift Nigeria to a premier status in the global digital economy by harnessing the potential of innovation and entrepreneurship.
The NITDA boss also disclosed the agency is conceptualising other initiatives like, Digital Literacy for All, which will equip Nigerians outside the formal education, with skills to navigate the difficult digital landscape.
He also noted that women, children and people with special needs will not be left out in the digital literacy drive.
“We have other initiatives targeting women, children and people with special needs, so we can carry everyone to achieve that 95 per cent digital literacy”, he said.
According to him, Nigeria will train over two million youths in twelve most highly sort after tech skills so that Nigeria can become a major outsourcing country to the world.
“Apart from digital literacy, we are going beyond that to digital sovereignty, so that we can develop all our digital innovation in-country.
“Therefore, we conducted skills gap assessment to identify skills in high demand locally and globally, and based on that, we have identified 12 tech skills in high demand and we used that to design 3 million Tech Talent initiative which is to train 3 million Nigerians on those 12 identified tech talents in high demand.
“The idea is that when we train them, some will be able to serve local market and some leave Nigeria to get jobs elsewhere for brain export, not brain drain.”
He also noted that just like India currently dominates the tech world, Nigeria can also do the same.
“India started brain export about 20 years ago and today, almost 25 per cent of sea level executives in big techs are Indians and they have dominated the global technology ecosystem.
“So, in Nigeria, we believe we can do the same and we have even more competitive advantage than India, we have a younger population, a fast-growing population, better accent than India, better time zone, so if we position ourselves, we can beat India in technology”, he said.
