NITDA Partners Lagos Business School on Strategic Roadmap Action Plan

Oghenevwede Ohwovoriole in Abuja

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has partnered the Lagos Business School (LBS), in the review of the agency’s digital transformation plan, the Strategic Roadmap Action Plan 2023-2027 (STRAP-2.0) and to develop the new plan.

The Director General of NITDA, Kachifu Abdulahi disclosed this at he Second Edition of the SRAP 2.0 Stakeholders Engagement Workshop on Wednesday in Abuja.

Kachifu Abdulahi said since the agency set targets for implementation it shouldn’t be the one to review itself or solely plan the next phase alone. “We need to set targets for ourselves. When we set targets, we need to identify the capabilities we need to achieve those targets. Part of the capabilities of human capital is key to it. So that was the reason we engaged Lagos Business School to look at our mandate, our strategy, and do research.

“Based on that research, they build use cases for our own training. Because we don’t want to be going to training and for them to be using use cases from Western countries, which sometimes we find it difficult connecting it with what we do.

“We believe the strategy is to help us reimagine ourselves within the Nigerian tech ecosystem. We don’t exist in isolation. We exist to serve you as our critical stakeholders. And also we exist to work together with you to create value for our country.”

He explained that “In 2023, we crafted the second strategic roadmap and action plan. The first one, we did the internal review. And for me, if you review yourself, you can decide to give whatever marks you want to give yourself.

“Out of 70 initiatives, we said we’ve achieved more than 80%. But we should not be the one grading ourselves. We should have you as our stakeholders to look at what we do, to tell us whether we do well or not.

“And also to hear from you what you are expecting from us. So that’s the reason when we are reviewing the achievement of SRAP 2.0, we said we don’t want to do it the same way we did the other one, because we need to come up with a new strategy. But we really want to engage you, to hear from you what happened between 2023 to date.

“We are working with the Lagos Business School again, to make sure we review the existing strategy, because we need to come up with new strategy next year. We normally do three-year strategy.

“But before we do next-year strategy, we want to make sure what we have promised in the last three years, we’ve delivered. And also we want to hear your own perspectives about it, and what you want us to put in the new strategy we are going to develop.” he said

Dr. Raymond Onuoha of Lagos business school in his presentation of the overview of SRAP 2.0 said,
“2.8 million Nigerians have been certified trained in digital skills.

“We have over 700 plus startups that have been supported through several initiatives, weather incubation, acceleration, provision of market access. We have funding that has been mobilised for the technology startups, $51.2 million, and an additional 100 million have been provided within that ecosystem. In terms of regulatory standards and frameworks that have been developed, we have about 17 of them, with the latest being the four national cloud investment and policy documents that have just been released.

“About 2.77 trillion Naira of public IT projects have been reviewed through NIDAT’s IT project clearance initiative. And in that process, 141 billion of cost savings have been optimised.

“And with regards to cybersecurity, almost 80,000 participants have been trained.

“At a broad glance, this is what SRAP has delivered in the last three years. And the imputes we are going to be getting from you will be in terms of driving these performance from activity to outcomes.

“We have seen the overall performance in terms of those key numbers, but how does that compare internationally? These are benchmarks. I know the Tech outlook conference itself within this particular DNIC 2026 is about driving our own numbers as a country, but again, what do people say with regards to where we are in terms of overall performance?” he added