By Balarabe Oshiafi

The National Information Technology Development Agency’s commitment to nurture an innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem as enshrined in its Strategic Road-map and Action Plan 2.0 received a major boost in Lagos at NITDA Co-Create West Africa Tech Expo, an event put together by GAGE Award in partnership with the Agency to showcase innovative businesses locally and across the globe with physical presence in Nigeria.

The NITDA’s Director General, Kashifu Inuwa, while delivering his keynote address at the event which has its theme as “Evolve” averred that both the government and ecosystem need to work together to nurture the younger ones and help them to transform their ideas from conceptualisation to impact.

I’m a news release made available to Expressday on Saturday in Abuja the DG said, “We need to help our start-ups to have access to capital for that will enhance their ideas and provide platform for them to network and learn from the ecosystem.

While acknowledging that the Nigerian Start-up Act Implementation is one of the several initiatives under the pillar, the NITDA boss urged the participants to forge a strategic partnership and collaborate to develop the ecosystem.

He said, “This event is one of them. This is a private-public partnership. We co-created the conference, and the conference itself is to promote co-creation. We do a lot of these activities. We believe no one should live in isolation, so we need to work as an ecosystem to create value together.”

Inuwa, while using the occasion to share the new NITDA’s Strategic Road-map and Action Plan 2024-2027 which is in sync with one of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s defined priority areas of “Accelerating Diversification through Industrialisation and Digitisation” to the participants who were majorly IT stakeholders and tech enthusiasts maintained that for the ecosystem to succeed, stakeholders must join hands with government to build a strong institution which could only be achieved by transforming government’s services into solutions.

He said, “I want to invite you to embrace the spirit of cooperation and collaboration. If you and government can work together, we can do better things; because there are things you can do, government cannot do and there are things government can do, you cannot do, but together, we can do greater things.”

The new NITDA’s Strategic Road-map and Action Plan which is billed to be unveiled in the first quarter of 2024 provides for eight pillars which are; Foster Digital Literacy and Cultivate Talents, Robust Technology Research Ecosystem, Strengthen Policy Implementation and Legal Framework, and Promote Inclusive Access to Digital Infrastructure and Services.