The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), and the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR) in partnership with Opinow Media, have trained youths in Abuja, on artificial intelligence and digital communication to economy.
Speaking at the closing session of the youths programme, the Director General, NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa, stated that the empowerment will increase youth knowledge onemerging technology in Nigeria.
Inuwa, who was represented by his Acting Director of Digital Literacy and Capacity Development, Mrs Amina Sambo Magaji, explained that the training has exposed youths to new ways of self-employment and making a living.
NITDA boss said: “In today’s closing session, a lot of feedback we got is for them to be able to take it to the next level. They can take it from here to become entrepreneurs by identifying problems or looking at different sectors and bringing this technology into it, so that they can start creating jobs for themselves.
“It would also start to generate some revenue and help in building the economy of the country. Similarly, with this skills, they can have access to global digital jobs across the world. And this would also help to bring foreign direct investment into Nigeria.
“So, this training is basically targeted at gaining the benefits to put our youth in the right position to get the benefits of the digital economy, trend that is all over the world and which helps in diversifying the economy from just oil producing, but also diversifying into different sectors in developing the national economy.”
In his remarks, Managing Director Opinow Media, Collins Nnadozie, noted that the training was part of NITDA’s idea of training 1million developers in Nigeria.
Nnadozie further said: “The capacity building initiative is to capturer Nigeria in the map of African countries to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) from companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft to set up VR Campuses and Labs to harness the talent pool of VR literate Nigerians.”
One of the beneficiaries, Obina Kehie, commended NITDA and NCAIR for organizing the entire training process.
He said: “The experience was wonderful, it was an eye opener and of course, it was brain shift. It was something that we have never experienced before.
“So, we got to learn new apps and how to use them, so it’s been wonderful and I gave kudos to the team that put this together.”
