By Adedapo Adesanya
The Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Mr Bosun Tijani, has announced a N1 billion partnership between the ministry and IHS Towers, one of the largest independent communications infrastructure firms in the world, to establish the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) Learning Community.
The ministry earlier this month released a 31-page policy document titled Accelerating our Collective Prosperity through Technical Efficiency which outlined plans to boost the country’s economy through the use of technology.
It said it would collaborate with other ministries and parastatals, including private sector stakeholders to drive opportunities for startups to facilitate the application of technology for enhanced productivity in critical sectors across the country.
The country will be seeking to spread the talent across programs focused on Agritech, Healthtech, Edtech, Mediatech, Cleantech, and Cretech among others.
In the announcement on Monday, Mr Tijani said, “I am excited to announce a N1 billion partnership between the Federal Ministery of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy and HIS Towers to establish the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) Learning Community. This initiative, which is in support of our recently launched 3MTT programme, will facilitate the set up of learning communities in the 36 states and the FCT.”
He said the N1 billion funding from IHS Towers also includes a commitment to paying the salaries of 37 dedicated learning community managers for each location for the next 3 years.
“This is the first in a number of partnerships that we will be securing in support of our targets, specifically for the 3MTT programme and broadly for the Knowledge pillar in our Strategic Blueprint.”
The programme which was launched on October 13 is based the model on a 1 per cent – 10 per cent – 100 per cent implementation approach. The first phase will aim to train and place 30,000 technical talents, representing 1 per cent of the overall target.
The 10 per cent phase will increase this to 300,000 talents and the 100 per cent will round off the number to 3 million.
According to Mr Tijani, this will be executed based on the framework co-created with key stakeholders across government agencies, training providers, educational institutions, development agencies, and the private sector.
The first phase of the programme, executed in collaboration with the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), would involve multiple stakeholders, including fellows, training providers, partners and placement organisations.
For the first phase, the scheme will focus on 12 technical skills, including software development, UI/UX design, data analysis and visualisation, quality assurance, product management, data science, and animation.
Others include Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML), cybersecurity, game development, cloud computing, and Dev Ops.
There are also plans to increase capital raised by Nigerian tech startups by 50 per cent year-on-year from $1 billion/year in 2022 to $5 billion/year in 2027 and increase domiciliation of local technology startups from less than (<) 1 per cent to 25 per cent by 2027.
