The Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mr. Kashifu Abdullahi claimed that Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria is now a global supplier of tech talents.
This claim came after U.S. Tech. giant, Google, unveiled 60 Africa Startups grantees of its second cohort Black Founders Fund (BFF) initiative yesterday in Abuja.
In his remarks during the unveiling ceremony, Abdullahi asserted that the project will boost Nigeria’s Digital Economy.
According to him: ‘This is the a golden opportunity for our Startups, because funding is one of the biggest challenges facing the Nigerian tech. ecosystem.
‘We have global talents shortage, everywhere they are looking for talents. In Nigeria, we have the talents that is why they are coming to tap from the pool.
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He further added that; ‘This kind of initiative will help us create more talents in the country, because it is the people’s component of technology.
“If you don’t have the people that will think and invent new ideas, there is no way we can have a good technology.
‘It is an opportunity to position ourselves to be the global talent suppliers.’
Abdullahi said that this is because Nigeria cannot compete with the big countries in terms of hard ware manufacturing, but in terms of software and talent.
‘This initiative will help build more in-country talents, solve local problems and upscale them to global scale.
‘This will open up Nigeria tech industry to the global market,’ he said.
Meanwhile, the Head, Startup Ecosystem Africa, Mr Folarin Aiyegbusi, has disclosed that Africa’s challenges need to be solved through deliberate efforts by Africans and globally.
He said that there was no better time than now to solve these challenges.
One of the grantees, the founder of Norebase, Mr Tola Onayemi, lauded Google for promoting tech. innovation in Africa.
