The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has partnered with Lagos Business School (LBS) to independently assess its 2023–2027 Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan (SRAP 2.0) and develop a new strategy for the agency.

The Director-General of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa, disclosed this at the Second Edition of the SRAP 2.0 Stakeholders Engagement Workshop held on Wednesday in Abuja.

The workshop was part of activities at the ongoing Digital Nigeria International Conference and Exhibition (DNICE).

Inuwa said the partnership would provide an independent assessment of the agency’s performance and enable stakeholders to contribute to the development of its next strategic plan.

He said NITDA deliberately opted for an external review rather than evaluating its performance internally to ensure objectivity and identify areas requiring improvement.

“In 2023, we crafted the second strategic roadmap and action plan. The first one, we did the internal review and for me, if you review yourself, you can decide to give whatever marks you want to give yourself.

“Out of 70 initiatives, we said we’ve achieved more than 80 per cent, but we should not be the ones grading ourselves. We should have you as our stakeholders to look at what we do, to tell us whether we do well or not,” he said.

According to him, the engagement will enable stakeholders to assess the agency’s performance between 2023 and 2026 and identify priorities for its next three-year strategic plan, scheduled for development in 2027.

Inuwa said the collaboration would also strengthen NITDA’s institutional capacity through research-based training and locally relevant case studies.

He explained that the agency needed to identify the human and institutional capabilities required to achieve its strategic targets.

“We need to set targets for ourselves. When we set targets, we need to identify the capabilities we need to achieve those targets. Part of the capabilities of human capital is key to it.

“That was the reason we engaged Lagos Business School to look at our mandate, our strategy and do research. Based on that research, they build use cases for our own training,” he said.

He added that the agency wanted its training programmes to reflect Nigeria’s socio-economic and technological realities rather than depend on examples from Western countries that might not adequately reflect the local technology ecosystem.

Presenting an overview of SRAP 2.0, Dr Raymond Onuoha of LBS highlighted some of the achievements recorded under the roadmap in the last three years.

Onuoha said about 2.8 million Nigerians had received digital skills certification, while more than 700 startups had benefited from support initiatives, including incubation, acceleration and market access.

He said approximately 51.2 million dollars had been mobilised for technology startups, with an additional 100 million dollars provided within the ecosystem.

On regulatory development, he said NITDA had facilitated the development of about 17 regulatory standards and frameworks.

He added that the agency had reviewed public-sector information technology projects valued at about N2.77 trillion through its IT Project Clearance initiative, generating optimised cost savings of N141 billion.

On cybersecurity, Onuoha said nearly 80,000 participants had received training to strengthen the country’s cybersecurity capacity.

He, however, said the next phase of the review would go beyond activities and reported figures to assess the actual outcomes and broader impact of the initiatives.

“At a broad glance, this is what SRAP has delivered in the last three years and the inputs we are going to be getting from you will be in terms of driving these performances from activity to outcomes,” he said.

Onuoha said the assessment would also benchmark Nigeria’s digital transformation performance against international standards to measure progress and identify areas requiring further intervention.

He urged stakeholders to provide constructive feedback to guide the review and shape the priorities of the agency’s next strategic roadmap. (NAN)

Edited by Tosin Kolade