Nigeria Opens Portal to Develop Digital Skills

By Adedapo Adesanya

The federal government has launched the Digital Nigeria Portal (www.digitalnigeria.gov.ng) and a corresponding mobile app to drive digital literacy in the country.

This was unveiled by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Mr Isa Pantami, on Monday in Abuja.

According to Mr Pantami, the program will provide a national platform for improving the digital literacy of Nigerians as well as enable Nigerians from all walks of life to acquire high-level digital skills.

He noted that the unveiling of the Digital Nigeria portal and its mobile app equivalent was part of the implementation the President Muhammadu Buhari-led National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) for a Digital Nigeria, adding that it was a follow up to the President’s flagging off of the Digital Nigeria Programme earlier in March to support digital innovation and entrepreneurship training for Nigerians.

According to him, “The Digital Nigeria Programme will provide a national platform for improving the digital literacy of Nigerians and it will enable Nigerians from all walks of life to acquire high-level digital skills.

“It will have a strong emphasis on skills for jobs and will include Nigerians in all strata of society, such as youth, women, children, internally displaced persons, people living with disabilities among others.

“We are championing a paradigm shift that lays emphasis on skills, in preference to merely having degrees without skills. Degrees are only meant to validate skills. This is a growing trend across the globe. For instance, China recently started the process of turning 600 of the country’s general universities into skill centres.

“Also, the President of the United States of America signed an Executive Order on the 26th of June 2020 directing the federal government lay emphasis on skills rather than degrees when hiring staff. The curriculum vitae of today should have two main parts- soft skills and hard skills.

“The digital literacy and skills pillar recognises the fact that citizens are the greatest assets in any economy, including the digital economy. It will support the development of a large pool of digitally literate and digitally skilled citizens. We recently provided a platform to support the Digital Nigeria program, enabling Nigerians to receive training in diverse digital skills.

“As part of these efforts, I earlier launched another online academy executed by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). Over 40,000 Nigerians have enrolled across both platforms since the 2nd of April, 2020.

“Today, we are formally launching the www.digitalnigeria.gov.ng portal and the ‘Digital Nigeria’ Mobile App. We are committed to enabling Nigerians to acquire high-level digital skills from the comfort of their homes.”

Mr Pantami noted that the objectives of the platform were, “to empower innovators and entrepreneurs with skills required to thrive in Nigeria’s emerging digital economy; to provide capacity building in a wide range of areas, including Digital Literacy, Productivity Tools, Web Development, Cloud Computing, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Database Administration, Networking, Programming, Internet of Things and Soft Skills;  To create a platform to support a paradigm shift from degrees to skills and bridge the gap between the academia and industry.”

“Others are to promote the development and distribution of instructional materials in electronic format, and to create an enabling environment for building the capacity of Innovation Driven Enterprises (IDEs) and Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) through e-learning channels,” he added.

On the training content, the Minister said “it covers Digital Skills, Productivity Tools, Web Development, Cloud Computing, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Database Administration, Networking, Programming and Internet of Things.

“There is also training on soft skills like entrepreneurship, research, marketing, business and how to create excellent resumes. As such, a wide spectrum of users, from beginners to advanced students, can find appropriate courses.”