The Federal Government has said that its plans to establish National Emerging Technology Centres in the country are underway following the approval of the proposal for these in the 2021 federal budget by the National Assembly.
Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Pantami disclosed this on Tuesday in his speech as the special guest of honour and keynote speaker at the ongoing 2021 edition of the Digital Africa Conference & Exhibition.
Pantami who expressed delight with the theme of the Conference noted that because Emerging technologies have the potentials of dominating the world in the next few years, his ministry had since discovered this and included it in the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy for a Digital Nigeria 2020-2030 document.
“Emerging technologies are very dear to me because they have the potentials of dominating the world in the next few years. It is because of this that if you go through our National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy for a Digital Nigeria 2020-2030, you will discover that pillar No 7 specifically speaks on Emerging technologies.
“We have captured Emerging technologies as Pillar No 7 because of the fact that we want to be very proactive in Africa particularly in Nigeria, in developing our capacity in that area. And in order to cascade the implementation of Pillar No 7, we came up with another policy on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria that is the National Policy on Emerging Technologies.
“And in that policy, let the FG through my office, direct the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to rename the centre we initially started as the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.
“I do hope that we have another centre that would focus on one or two aspects of emerging technologies so that we would be able to have so many centres across the country so that each centre will focus on only one or two aspects of emerging technologies.
The Minister said Nigeria’s target is not just to be consumers of emerging technologies but to be proactive and be among the leading nations particularly in the area of emerging technologies. “We are glad Artificial Intelligence is the focus of this conference, and we have already established a centre, and have many programmes and events going on now on emerging technologies.”
He disclosed that recently, his ministry had a partnership with Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Huawei and others that resulted in the establishment of two virtual institutions, adding that most of these institutions focus more on “providing skills on emerging technologies to our teeming youths in Nigeria.”
He recalled that by the end of March 2021, more than 210,000 citizens had enrolled in the two virtual institutions and a substantial number of them obtaining their certification.
Pantami commended the Chairman of Digital Africa, Dr. Evans Woherem and his team for their consistency, commitment and support for a Digital Nigeria and assured them of the support of the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy as well as parastatals and agencies under it.