Nigeria has to go beyond traditional outsourcing towards AI-Enabled Digital Services – NITDA DG

Abdullahi made the call during the “Hire from Nigeria” session organised by the Nigeria Economic and Trade Advancement Programme, where he joined the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Jumoke Oduwole and the Minister of Education, Moruf Alausa, to discuss impact sourcing, global trade, skills development and inclusive job creation.

He said Nigeria’s competitive advantage should extend beyond supplying labour for conventional outsourcing, particularly as Artificial Intelligence continues to reshape the global services economy, adding that the country had an opportunity to establish a distinctive position in AI-augmented, IT-enabled services by equipping its workforce not only to use emerging technologies but also to understand, shape, develop and create economic value from them.

Abdullahi also highlighted the country’s evolving frameworks for data protection, digital identity, cybersecurity, digital infrastructure assurance, data classification, sovereign cloud and software quality assurance, stressing that trust, security and regulatory certainty would be critical to attracting global businesses and positioning Nigeria as a dependable destination for technology-driven digital services.

The NITDA chief referenced Project BRIDGE, which targets the deployment of 90,000 kilometres of fibre infrastructure, as well as the Cloud First Policy and other initiatives designed to encourage private sector investment in computing infrastructure and AI factories. He further stressed the importance of ensuring that Nigeria and other underrepresented communities have a place in the datasets and technologies driving the AI economy, cautioning that communities absent from the datasets used to develop intelligent systems risk becoming invisible in the technologies shaping the future.

He noted that initiatives such as the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR) and the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy were laying the foundation for indigenous AI capabilities while connecting Nigeria’s talent and innovation ecosystem to opportunities in the global digital economy.

Abdullahi concluded that Nigeria’s opportunity was, therefore, not simply to supply talent to the world but to equip its talent with AI capabilities, trusted digital infrastructure and globally competitive skills to deliver higher value services to the global market.