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The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) said it is seeking to have its enabling Act reworked and infuse new policies that will help sustain the growth of the technology- innovation ecosystem.
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“At NITDA, we are reenacting our Act and laws to make it more robust so that we protect the ecosystem”, said Director-General, NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi to the startup community and other stakeholders in a recent meeting in Lagos that had representatives from Microsoft, MasterCard, and Norebase.
According to Abdullahi, NITDA seeks to strengthen the climate for investments, partnerships, commercialisation of innovations, enabling policies and acquisition of relevant skills as well as trainings in a way that makes the ecosystem sustainable.
His words: “We cannot succeed in isolation; we need each other to succeed. Innovation is not distributed evenly across the world. Innovation and digital economy is about humans”.
“A company is as good as its next product and its products are as good as the person or people who make them. This underscores the relevance of talents. If you don’t have the requisite skills and talents, then it is no deal”, he added.
“The sector we are in is dynamic and we must move with its pace, so we don’t play catch ups or get left far behind. We must disrupt the way we do things and bring to bear professionalism, innovations that will solve indigenous problems but have global impact.”
He assured that NITDA will continue to support the ecosystem urging the need for mutual trust between stakeholders and government.
Abdullahi said the agency has through various initiatives and policy thrust provisioned support for areas that covers support hardware development, talents discovery, local content enforcement, standardization, and digital skills development amongst others.
Lagos state will continue to enjoy NITDA’s support as it remains viable as the host to most Nigerian startups and houses the strongest unicorn of innovation in the country, said the NITDA’s boss.
