The United Kingdom (UK) has disclosed that there are plans to train Nigerian Civil Servants on basic digital skills.
The Country Lead and Programme Adviser, UK Government’s Digital Access Programme, Idongesit Udoh, made the disclosure in Abuja at the grand finale of the DigitalForAll Challenge organised by Tech4Dev in partnership with Microsoft.
“We have some pipelines activities including upskilling basic digital skills for civil servants partnering with some specific states on that, we are supporting some state governments to develop their own state-level digital economy policy and strategy. Which is to help entrench digital development at the state level”, said Udoh.
According to Udoh, the UK government has in the past supported Nigeria in some technical areas.
“The UK is actively supporting Nigeria through tech development. And of course, we have worked with the federal government in the past. On things like developing the national broadband plan.
“On the cyber front, we provided technical assistance to develop the new Nigeria national Cybersecurity policy and strategy. And currently, we are working with the private sector on multiple fronts including digital skills for women and girls, but also across the states from north to the south up-skilling on basic digital skills”, he added.
The Nigerian government through the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, called on the private sector to help the government in meeting its target of creating five million digital literate by 2030.
The Minister, who was represented by his Technical Adviser on Strategy, Olufemi Adeluyi, called on the private sector to do more in bridging the digital gap.
“Government alone cannot do this, but with the help of people like you, we will be able to meet the target of creating 5 million digital literates”, he said.
The Minister encouraged more programmes like this to help increase the number of digital literates.
According to the Director of Partnership and Sustainability, Tec4Dev, Joel Ogunsola, the vision of Tech4Dev is to foster economic development.
“Our vision is to equip Africans with digital and life skills that foster economic prosperity, financial freedom, and sustainable development”, said Ogunsola.
Speaking on the Digital for All Challenge, he said, “The Digital for All Challenge is a free digital skilling program and competition designed to drive youth digital literacy across Nigeria and spur interest in acquiring digital skills and certifications via onsite and online platforms.
“It aims to equip men and women between the ages of 16 – 45 years with digital skills to enable equal access to technology-centric economic opportunities. It’s is a sub-program under Microsoft’s Emerging Market Model Initiative, implemented in Nigeria by Tech4Dev.”
He also said, Tech4Dev also has a programme known as the Emerging Market Model Initiative (EMMI) to train public servants.
“EMMI is a multi-year, multi-stakeholder private-public-non-profit partnership. It was designed to build the capacity of key government Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) to offer sustainable, scalable reskilling and employment services aligned to the local labour markets”, he added.
The grand finale of the #Digitalforallchallenge winner from the intermediate level, Theresa Sunday, went home with two million five hundred thousand naira (N2,500,000) the grand finale winner from the basic level, Nelson Didiam, went home with One million naira (N1,000,000), and the other six finalists went home with laptops.
Both Theresa Sunday and Nelson Didiam, were so excited about winning the prize money of N2.5m and N1m respectively and advised other youths to look for any digital skills to be part of the Tech4Dev challenge.
Tech4Dev is a non-profit organisation, dedicated to creating access to decent work, entrepreneurship opportunities, and platforms for Africans through digital skills empowerment and advocacy.
