Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital economy, Bosun Tijiani, says the ministry has created a unique model to help implement its goal of training 3 million technical talents over the next four years.
Speaking during the Moonshot conference hosted by TechCabal on Wednesday, 11th October, Tijani said the model was contained in its 31-page policy document.
Tijiani revealed that the ministry was “using a 1-10-100-model”, and was “starting with 1% of our 3 million target and that will be for the first three months. And that 1% is going to be 30,000 people. So, starting this Friday, you will see applications being released for both trainers and those who want to be fellows,”
The minister also mentioned that the 30,000 people would be broken down to capture each state in Nigeria, based on a calculation of its population and economic activity. The ministry believes this approach will make it easier to reach the 3 million target and bridge the talent gap in the Nigerian tech ecosystem.
Better explaining the training process, Tijiani stated “from the 1% which is the prototype, we move to the 10% which is the pilot stage. Once we can get that right, it is easier to scale to a larger number. If Nigeria can train today 300,000 technical talents, we can become the most competitive country on the continent when it comes to training technical talent.”
Tijiani noted that the same model will be applied to achieve the ministry’s goal of placing Nigeria within the top 25% percentile in research globally across six pivotal Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technological domains. These being AI, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, blockchain, and additive manufacturing.
The ministry is also on a national AI strategy for Nigeria, and while inclusion of the technology is recognised as one of its biggest challenges. Tijiani vowed that the ministry was “going to work to make the data about Nigeria connected with our realities,”
