Nigeria must move beyond traditional outsourcing and position itself as a competitive destination for artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled global digital services, the Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has said.
Abdullahi stated this during the “Hire from Nigeria” session organised by the Nigeria Economic and Trade Advancement Programme (NATEP) on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA81).
The NITDA boss joined the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, and the Minister of Education, Dr Moruf Alausa, in discussions on impact sourcing, global trade, skills development and inclusive job creation.
Abdullahi said Nigeria’s competitive advantage should extend beyond traditional outsourcing as artificial intelligence continued to transform the global services industry.
He said the country had an opportunity to build a distinctive position around AI-augmented and IT-enabled services.
According to him, this requires equipping Nigerians not only to use emerging technologies but also to understand, develop and create economic value with them.
The NITDA director-general highlighted Nigeria’s evolving frameworks on data protection, digital identity, cybersecurity, digital infrastructure assurance, data classification, sovereign cloud and software quality assurance.
He said trust, security and regulatory certainty were essential to attracting global businesses and positioning Nigeria as a dependable destination for digital services.
Abdullahi also referenced Project BRIDGE, which targets the deployment of 90,000 kilometres of fibre-optic infrastructure.
He said the Cloud First Policy and other government measures were also aimed at encouraging private-sector investment in computing infrastructure and AI factories.
The NITDA boss stressed the importance of representation in the emerging AI economy, warning that communities and economies absent from datasets used to develop intelligent systems could be underrepresented in technologies shaping the future.
He said initiatives such as the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR) and the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy were helping to lay the foundation for indigenous AI capabilities.
According to him, these initiatives would also help connect Nigeria’s talent and innovation ecosystem to opportunities in the global digital economy.
Abdullahi said Nigeria’s opportunity was not simply to supply talent to the global market but to equip its workforce with AI capabilities, trusted digital infrastructure and globally competitive skills to deliver higher-value services.
He said strengthening these capabilities would help position Nigerian professionals and businesses to participate more effectively in the evolving global digital services market.
