The National Information Technology Development Agency said that gender equality in the digital space could increase the Gross Domestic Product of the country by over 50 per cent.
The Director-General NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa said this on Friday at the closing ceremony of its ‘Fasaha Gina Mata, Gina Al-Umma’ digital skills programme in Abuja, in collaboration with World Bank and Natview Technology.
According to the NITDA boss, Fasaha Gina Mata Gina Al-Umma is a digital skills training programme to equip young women with the relevant skills they need to succeed in the digital world.
The four-day programme was held as part of the activities of the agency to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Speaking further, Inuwa recalled research by Mckinsey Global Institute which stated that placing women together with their male counterparts would increase the global GDP to about $18tn in 2025.
“If Nigeria can position itself, we can be part of this, we can have Nigeria be part of the Gig economy and working remotely.
“We can be part of the global value chain working remotely from Nigeria for European countries, the US companies, Asian companies and programmes like this will help us achieve that,’’ Inuwa said
In addition, the DG stated that they were initiating women-based programme to encourage more female participation in tech.
He, however, disclosed that from November 2022 to date, the NITDA had trained 226,000 young Nigerians on various digital skills with women representing only 28 per cent of the figure, stressing that the idea was to achieve 95 per cent digital literacy by 2030, which was kick-started with the Gina Mata programme to train 800 young women in the pilot programme.