By Dwelleth Morountodun
The National Information Technology Development Agency, (NITDA) through Office for ICT Innovation and Entrepreneurship
and Stakeholders in the Start-up ecosystem are jointly working on creating a policy document for Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
The motive behind co-creating the document, according to NITDA is to come up with unique strategies for seamless implementation of the document.
At the Stakeholders workshop in Abuja, the NITDA Director-General, Mallam Kashifu Abdullahi, who was represented by the Director of eGovernment Development and Regulations, Dr Vincent Olatunji said the agency adopted the new approach of creating the document with stakeholders for it to be owned by Nigerians. He said.
“We want you to see this assignment as a national assignment that is the reason we deviated from our usual engagement of a consultant to prepare the policy for us, if we had engaged the consultant we may not see the document as ours and we want it to be owned by us.”
He stated further that the idea would be a game-changer in the country because the country has a start-up ecosystem that can compete with anyone in the world.
“I keep saying it, we have ideas and these ideas can be compared to any other in the world. We want an ecosystem that can develop tech solutions from ideation stage to commercialization and this can not be easily achieved without properly having a plan that can really guide us in doing the right thing.
The DG, said that co-creating a document of such magnitude would prevent people working in silos without the proper direction of what we want to do adding that, that is why it is very important to have “this kind of document that is jointly prepared.
He said, “We want to properly understand what we want to do, how we want to do it, who are the Stakeholders and where do stakeholders come from.
“This is why we selected people from academia, industry, public sector, private sector and start-ups ecosystem in the country.”
While decrying the attitude of Nigerians for not patronizing the local solutions upon the proclamation of Executive Orders 003 and 005, he advised for the patronage of local ICT products and services.
In her remarks on the introduction of the workshop, the National Coordinator of OIIE, Dr. Amina Sambo-Magaji advised the Stakeholders not to be over-ambitious in their efforts at preparing the document because its implementation would be within three years.
She said, “We want to prepare a document that is very simple and achievable within three years time frame. We want a document that would supercharge the start up ecosystem.”
The National Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship policy would be anchored on 5 strategic pillars which include, advancing human capital, unlocking funding, enabling infrastructure, boosting demand and promoting entrepreneurship.