Technology

Int’l Women’s Day: FG Promises to Increase Inclusion in Digital Sector

Published

2 years ago

07/03/2023

By Adedapo Adesanya

The federal government has reiterated its commitment to bring women into the digital sector, which has reduced $1 trillion from the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of low- and middle-income countries.

The Minister of Women Affairs, Ms Pauline Tallen, made this disclosure ahead of an event in commemoration of the 2023 International Women’s Day (IWD). The event, which will be marked on Wednesday, March 8, is themed DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality.

According to her, bringing women and other marginalised groups into technology has greater potential for innovations that meet women’s needs and promote gender equality.

“The lack of women inclusion, by contrast, comes with massive costs and, according to the UN Women 2022 Snap Short Report, women’s exclusion from the digital world.

“This has reduced one trillion dollars from the GDP of low- and middle-income countries in the last decade.

“This loss will grow to $1.5 trillion by 2025 without action.

“Reversing this trend, according to the report, will require tackling the problem of online violence, which 38 per cent of women had personally experienced,” she said.

The minister stressed the need for a gender-responsive approach to innovation, technology, and digital education that could increase the awareness of women and girls regarding their rights and civic engagement.

She also called for the adoption of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses by girls to address discrimination and gender bias and improve participation in all spheres.

“I, therefore, ask that teachers and educational institutions be supported to consciously remove gender biases and stereotypes in our educational environments, textbooks, and didactic materials.

“It starts with making women’s contributions to STEM visible, including through connecting young women and girls with STEM professionals and mentors,” she said.

On his part, Mr Marthias Schumale, UN resident Coordinator, said they would enhance the involvement of women and girls in technology to increase gender inclusion.

“We will continue to invest in technology. And as we do that, we will prioritise women and girls because collectively, we can make the world of technology and innovation inclusive by working together,” he said.

Also, Ms Uller Mueller, UNFPA Country Representative, harped on the role technology plays in expanding networks, opportunities, and minds.

Ms Mueller, represented by Ms Erika Goldson, UNFPA Deputy Representative, however, noted that technology was increasingly misused and weaponised, with women and girls disproportionately targeted.

“This can take the form of image-based abuse, sextortion, harassment, hate speech, cyberbullying and doxing.

“Data tell us that 97 per cent of girls between 11 to 16 years in Nigeria have experienced unwanted sexual approaches in chat rooms, social networking sites or emails.

“Over 7.89 per cent of this group have been sent sexual images or content, and 57 per cent of women have had their videos or images online abused or misused,” she said.

She added that UNFPA was developing safety and ethics guidelines for practitioners designing technology for gender-based violence prevention and response.

Ms Mueller said that technology companies are engaged in involving women in design processes from the outset.

“Technology is essential to advancing gender equality. When women and girls can access and use technology safely, they can amplify their voices and exercise their agency and autonomy.

“This is giving them a platform that can transform their future – and ours,” she said.

Up Next

200 Cyber Attacks Blocked During Presidential, NASS Elections—Firm

Don't Miss

Experts Seek Science, Tech, Innovation to Drive Africa’s Sustainable Growth

Adedapo Adesanya

Adedapo Adesanya is a journalist, polymath, and connoisseur of everything art. When he is not writing, he has his nose buried in one of the many books or articles he has bookmarked or simply listening to good music with a bottle of beer or wine. He supports the greatest club in the world, Manchester United F.C.

Click to comment

Technology

Tijani Sees Digital Economy Contributing One-Fifth to Nigeria’s GDP

Published

2 days ago

29/08/2025

Adedapo Adesanya

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Mr Bosun Tijani, has projected that the digital economy to will contribute over one-fifth to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2030.

Mr Tijani said this at the National Digital Economy and E-Governance Bill stakeholders’ engagement on Thursday in Abuja.

Mr Tijani was represented by the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Mr Adeladan Rafiu, in his address, said that in Q1 2025, Nigeria’s digital economy contributed N7 trillion to real GDP, representing 14.19 per cent of the N49.34 trillion total GDP.

According to him, presently, the sector contributes 16 per cent to 18 per cent of GDP, with well-defined strategies to increase this to 21 per cent by 2030.

“These figures demonstrate both the current impact and the vast potential of a unified, digitally empowered economy driven by robust legislation,” he said.

Speaking on the importance of the bill, the minister said that it sought to establish a robust legal and regulatory framework that would guide the implementation of digital governance in Nigeria.

“We can ensure that this bill provides the solid legal foundation required to drive digital identity, aid governance and overall decision-making for Nigeria,” Mr Tijani said.

Also speaking, the Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mr Kachifu Abdullahi, said that the bill would accelerate digitisation of the Nigerian economy.

“Everybody is contributing to see how we can build a legal and institutional framework for our national digital economy.

“Government is doing a lot in digital literacy to educate our citizens to develop their digital fluency, so that everyone will be part of it and deepen the financial inclusion as well,” he said

The National Commissioner of Nigerian Data Protection Commission (NDPC), Mr Vincent Olatunji, in his goodwill message, said that the digital economy sector was the most consistent in growth.

“I am not sure of any other sector where there is consistent progress in a particular sector and contributing highly to the growth of our economy,” he said.

Earlier, the Director-General of Galaxy BackBone (GBB), Mr Ibrahim Adeyanju, said that digital economy could not be mentioned without a digital infrastructure and that is where GBB comes in.

“The government has invested a lot in terms of infrastructure, which are there to support the digital economy,” he said.

Technology

Zoho Unveils Zia LLM, Expands AI Suite With Agents, Studio Tools

Published

2 days ago

28/08/2025

Modupe Gbadeyanka

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

A global technology company, Zoho, has introduced its proprietary large language model known as Zia LLM, trained specifically for business use cases, keeping privacy and governance at its core, which has resulted in lowering the inference cost, passing on that value to the customers, while also ensuring that they are able to utilise AI productively and efficiently.

In a statement, the company also announced the launched of a no-code agent builder, Zia Agent Studio, over 25 deployable Zia agents, and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server to open up its vast library of actions to third-party agents.

The Country Head for Zoho Nigeria, Mr Kehinde Ogundare, noted that these products demonstrate the organisation’s longstanding aim to build foundational technology focused on protection of customer data, breadth and depth of capabilities because of the business context, and value.

Zia LLM leveraged NVIDIA’s AI accelerated computing platform. It comprises three models with 1.3 billion, 2.6 billion and 7 billion parameters, each separately trained and optimised for contextual applicability that benchmark competitively against comparable open source models in the market.

The three models allow Zoho to always optimise the right model for the right user context, striking the balance between power and resource management. In the short term, Zoho will scale Zia LLM’s model sizes, starting with the first set of parameter increases by the end of 2025.

While Zoho supports many LLM integrations for users, including ChatGPT, Llama, and DeepSeek, Zia LLM continues its commitment to data privacy by allowing customers to keep their data on its servers, leveraging the latest AI capabilities without sending their data to AI cloud providers.

As for the Zia Agent Studio, Zoho has simplified it to be fully prompt-based (with the option to use low-code) and includes ready-made access to over 700 actions across its products.

Agents built by users can be deployed autonomously, triggered by button click, with rule-based automation, or even summoned within customer conversations.

To enable immediate adoption of agentic technology, Zoho has developed a roster of AI agents contextually baked right into its products. These agents can be used across various business activities, handling relevant actions based on the role of the user. These include Customer Service Agent for Zoho Desk that can process incoming customer requests, understand the context, and either answer directly or triage them to a human rep, providing an efficient first line of assistance.

At the time of deployment, an agent can be provisioned as a digital employee, maintaining the user access permission structure defined within the organisation. Admins can perform behavioural audits as well as performance and impact analyses on digital employees, ensuring that every agent is working as effectively as possible and within clear guardrails.

These agents are available in Agent Marketplace from where customers can easily deploy them. Ecosystem partners, ISVs, and individual developers will be able to create agents and host them on the Zia Agents Marketplace in coming months.

The company plans to add more skills to Ask Zia, allowing it to act as an assistant to Finance teams, Customer Support teams to start with. Support for the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol will be implemented, allowing Zia Agents to interact and collaborate with each other, as well as collaborate with agents on other platforms.

Technology

AI Can Drive Nigeria’s GDP Growth by 20%—NITDA

Published

3 days ago

28/08/2025

Adedapo Adesanya

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mr Kashifu Inuwa, has projected that the digital economy, using Artificial Intelligence (AI), could drive the country’s economy up to 20 per cent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth.

Mr Inuwa said at the 3rd Economic Confidential Lecture in Abuja on Wednesday that AI was no longer optional but essential.

“Those who fail to upskill will be replaced. AI can free up 20 per cent of time for higher productivity, and nations leading in AI will lead the world.”

According to him, the country can not afford to miss the fourth industrial revolution after losing out in the first three revolutions.

Mr Inuwa said that there were ongoing collaborations with the Ministry of Education to build digital literacy into the country’s national curriculum, and with the office of Head of Service of the Federation to enhance civil service training .

“Market women can now connect with customers through mobile technology. But as we connect, we must also protect, and cybersecurity is a critical pillar.”

The President and Chairman of Council, Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), Mr Ike Neliaku, said that the country must ensure that participation in the digital global economy is inclusive, innovative, and sustainable.

Mr Neliaku, was represented by NIPR fellow, Mr Afolabi Olajuwon, urged the country to be committed to building capacity, investing in infrastructure, and creating policies that enable innovation to thrive.

“We are living in a period where technology is reshaping governance, trade, education, healthcare and every aspect of human endeavour.

“Nations that fail to embrace the digital revolution risk being left behind, while those that seize the opportunity can leapfrog barriers to growth and development,” Mr Neliaku said.

He said that the country was blessed with a dynamic youth population, abundant talent and a spirit of innovation,adding that must advance its embrace of this new reality.

Mr Neliaku said that the Renewed Hope Agenda challenged Nigerians to harness technology, not merely as consumers, but as creators, innovators and exporters of digital solutions.

He said that to achieve this, there should be collaboration among government, private sector and the academia, adding that the media was not optional, but critical and essential.

“I also wish to commend the unveiling of the three landmark publications: Diplomacy and digital innovation: youths’ insights. Healing Nigeria: A chronicle of health reform and hope, and also the Renewed hope in central banking.

“Each of these publications reflects a thoughtful attempt to capture pressing national and global issues, while offering practical insights for policy and practice.

“They are not just books, but tools for shaping informed conversations and evidence-based decision-making,” Mr Neliaku said.

Other experts identified AI as a key factor to be embraced to drive Nigeria’s economy into a prosperous one.

They canvassed for the deployment of technology and AI into the country’s current struggle for economic diversification and general development.

Specifically, they called for the adoption of AI to enhance Nigeria’s growth in the fourth global industrial revolution.