NITDA Discloses How Nigeria Can Make $49 Billion Annually

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has disclosed that Nigeria can earn about $49bn annually from software developers and other technology outfit.

Director General of NITDA, Inuwa Abdullahi  insisted that the shortcut for the country's development  remains the talent route, stressing that more than 55% of the country’s GDP is based on services.

Abdullahi stated this during a courtesy visit to the Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brig Gen. Yushau Dogara Ahmed on Thursday in Abuja.

"There is a global talent shortage and if Nigeria can position itself by training people and conveniently providing two million developers in two years, adding that the country can earn about $40bn from the pool of 2 million developers, which will invariably also help address the agency’s remittance challenge as well.

“Looking at the fact that Nigeria can be the talent hub of the world, given its competitive advantage to close the gap, we have identified your Organization as a key partner, if we must achieve the projections”, Inuwa affirmed.

Meanwhile, he gave his nod for NITDA collaboration with the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in scaling awareness and adoption of Emerging Technologies among the Youth Corps members.

The partnership, according to him, is in a bid to proactively facilitate the development of Nigeria into a sustainable digital economy and fast track the creation of an enabling environment where Nigerians can develop, adopt and derive value from digital technology.

Inuwa, who expressed the Agency’s willingness to collaborate with the Corps during a courtesy call by the team, reiterated the fact that NITDA being the bedrock in scaling awareness and adoption of Emerging Technologies will be more than willing to go the extra mile in fine-tuning the already existing collaboration towards moving the nation forward.