The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Good morning, everyone. And welcome to ‑‑ just a minute, please.
Good morning, everyone. And welcome to the Nigeria Open Forum. On behalf of the Nigeria Internet Governance Forum, this is Digital Literacy as a Precondition for Achieving Universal AUA & DR. My name is Ibiso Kingsley‑George.
We'll have Mr. Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi to make a lead presentation. After which, he will give some presentations, and the rest of the panellists will also make comments.
Before we comment, we have some dignitaries with us. We have the Senate Committee Chairman on Cybersecurity and ICT. He will make an intervention. And we also have the House Committee Chair on ‑‑ and we would like for them to give us some encouragement before we proceed with the session.
Thank you.
>> Hello.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: We can hear you, sir. Go ahead.
>> Good morning, all. I'm extremely delighted to be here. Best wishes. We're talking about digital literacy as a condition for the AUA. This is relevant. In Nigeria, we're discussing this at the UN global event IGF. For so long, Nigeria has been known for our natural resources, after all our ‑‑ the global economy. But in recent times, Nigeria is also known for the skills and expertise of the citizens. We gave the world something to share about in terms of our movies. Out of every for Africa, several are from Nigeria. It's not just Africa but globally. Now we're talk about digital literacy and digital economy. A country where over ‑‑ 50 million people ‑‑ are youth.
This allows us to leverage technology not only for development of our country but to be a leading member of the intelligent community.
Therefore, I would like to encourage us to have these conversations and to also recognise that the government is putting together another administration for digital literacy for the private sector to come with initiatives that will leverage our local languages and leverage the connectivity and other programmes in place to ensure that the Nigerian citizens are digitally literate.
Help us build a digital inclusive Nigeria where no one is excluded.
God bless you and God bless Nigeria.
(Applause)
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you, Senator.
We will have an intervention from the Chairman House Committee on ICT and cybersecurity, Stanley ‑‑. Thank you.
>> Stanley: Very good morning to you all. I'm Stanley Olajide (phonetic). I bring you warm greetings.
I think when we're talking about digital literacy, it's all about how do we bring technology close and close the gap. The digital literacy in Nigeria is so wide and all across Africa, actually. It's not only Nigeria. So how do we bridge this gap?
I believe with the discourse in this room, we can do that. We will do the best we can and make all the right laws to make sure that all our citizens, that nobody ‑‑ because we have a huge amount of population living in the rural area. In order for us to close the digital divide, digital literacy must be promoted.
Again, I wish for us to have a fruitful deliberation and Nigeria shall be great for the very best of our nation.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you, sir.
On that note, I would like to call the Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency, popularly known as NITDA, to give us his presentation. Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi is involved with growth management and strategy formulation, IT governance, and government relations, talent development, financial regulation, and digital transformation.
We're clearly going to hear from an expert today on the Digital Literacy For All project. It's a pet project of NITDA.
Thank you.
>> KASHIFU INUWA ABDULLAHI: Thank you very much. And thank you for having me.
We all need to develop our digital fluency to navigate the world we live today.
So, in Nigeria, we started our journey very early to digital literacy. In 2021, we developed our national IT policy, and the same year, in April, NITDA was accomplished for the national policy.
The policy main objective was to get Nigerians to use IT because, as of 2021, less than 500,000 Nigerians had access to computer, and ICT was contributing less than 0.05% of GDP.
In 2012, a new policy was developed, which is focused more on ICT not just IT so that people can start using technology, not just for the day‑to‑day activities but even to communicate between government officials, government citizens, and private government.
Then, in 2019, a new policy was developed, the National Digital Economy Policy, which was a major shift from just getting people to use technology but getting people to use technology for economic activities.
Then NITDA developed the Strategy Roadmap and Action Plan.
He made it clear that economy diversification and inclusivity are paramount to the agenda.
The president outlined eight key priorities to achieve this vision with priority number seven specifically focused on accelerating diversification through industrialisation, manufacturing, and more, which has a focus on digital transformation.
And the Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy which creates technological efficiency.
At NITDA, we developed our action plan and strategic roadmap.
If you look at the eight points, they all focus on reforming the country.
Today, we live in a world where every organisation is a tech organisation. No organisation today that does not use IT. Every industry is becoming digital today. Therefore, digital can help Mr. President to achieve the eight‑point areas.
Then the Ministry blueprint has five pillars with knowledge as the first pillar because knowledge is the foundation upon which countries build robust and sustainable economy.
Then, at NITDA, our Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan has eight strategic pillars.
The first is to foster digital literacy and cultivate talent because digital literacy is something that we must give priority in this era. Everything we do is about digital. Therefore, we need to develop our digital fluency and get all of our citizens to use technology safely and responsibly.
The second pillar is about building a robust technology with such ecosystem because digital literacy and talents are quick wins, but, for the future, we need to invest in deep tech research because, according to ‑‑ by 2030, there will be 20 million talent deficit globally, which if left unaddressed could result in 8.5 trillion U.S. dollars in unrealised annual revenue.
So Nigeria and Africa, we can position ourself as a global talent exporter because most of the part of the world are suffering from aging while we have a very young and digitally native population.
Then the third pillar is about promoting inclusive access to digital services and infrastructure. Therefore, this also aligns with Mr. President's priority on inclusivity. We need to get every Nigerian to have access to digital devices and services.
Sorry, that third pillar is on strengthen policy implementation and legal framework because we need to enable the playing field for our citizens to build both the digital literacy content and digital offerings that will digitise Nigeria.
Now, we have a pillar, also, on cybersecurity and digital trust because, as we digitise, we also need to build confidence in our citizens to use the technology.
Then we have a pillar on natural, innovative, and untapped ecosystem. After training people, they need to be able to come up with services that will help Nigeria build its own digital offering and achieve our digital sovereignty as well.
Then we have a pillar on strategic partnership and collaboration because we believe no one succeeds in isolation. We need to work as an ecosystem to achieve our vision of making Nigeria a digitally empowered nation, fostering inclusive economic growth through technology and innovation.
Then we also have a pillar on creating an agile workforce and organisational culture that everybody should be able to transform. How can we come up with a job evolution within our organisation, within government, that can help people to be ready for the future work? Because we have this fear that technology is going to replace or displace us, but I don't think technology or AI or any technology we think of will replace us as a human. But it will replace the skills we have and the processes we follow to do our work today.
So, therefore, we need to learn, relearn, and unlearn how we do things before.
If you want to download the Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan, you can scan the QR Code to get it online because it is a comprehensive document that helps us to orchestrate our digital journey.
So, based on the first pillar of our Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan, which focuses on fostering digital literacy and cultivating talent, we develop the National Digital Literacy Framework with an ambitious target of achieving 95% of digital literacy by 2030.
It has five objectives. The first one is universal access.
We want every Nigerian to have access to digital literacy and skills. Then skills development. We want to orchestrate our digital literacy because it's not something that you can build at once, and, therefore, we look at how to embed it in our formal education. We have a different proficiency level. What someone in primary school can learn is different from what someone in institutions need to learn.
And, also, the digitally literate populations, what is needed is different. For them, they have the augmentative capability. They can easily use technology without anybody taking them through how to use it. But what they need to build is the attitude of using the technology.
Then we have the objective of inclusive participation, gender, even people with special needs. We need to carry everyone along.
Then we have the objective about getting our workforce ready for the future of work. Then we have the local content creation. We don't want to rely on content created for other countries. We have our unique value propositions and needs. Therefore, there is a need to build a custom‑made content for our needs in‑country. This covers even the language barriers. We need to build content using our local languages as well.
So you can also get the copy of the National Digital Literacy Framework by scanning the QR Code.
The Digital Literacy Framework has six competency areas and 23 individual competences. Our target is to build our citizens' digital fluency on device and software oppression and information and data literacy, content creation, collaboration, and communication, safety, and problem‑solving.
So these areas are key for you to use digital services safely and responsibly.
And the framework was built based on the digital framework, which is an EU digital literacy framework and the UNESCO digital literacy framework. So we use these two frameworks and crafted it on digital literacy framework based on our need as a country.
Then we have an implementation strategy for the framework, which we call a Digital Literacy For All. The target is achieving 95% of digital literacy level by 2030.
Then we have a mid‑time target of achieving 70% by 2027.
So we are implementing this initiative in three buckets. We've done the assessment to know where we are, to establish the best line. The only available report we were able to use to establish that was a report from the World Bank data for Better Lives 2021.
Based on that report, the Nigerian digital literacy level was 44% in 2021. So we look at what has been done since then, and we've extrapolated that. We've added about six points. Therefore, as of 2024, our best line was 50%. Then, to achieve 70%, at least we need to train 50 million Nigerians to achieve that. Therefore, we have the initiatives in three buckets.
The first one is our informal sector, which is the most exclusive, in terms of digital literacy.
And they're the ones that suffered the most when it comes to cybersecurity breaches.
So we work with the NYSC, a programme in Nigeria where every graduate does a one‑year service.
The NYSC has six batches and six streams in a year. So it runs across 36 states, 774 local governments in Nigeria.
So we design our initiative whereby we recruit 80 champions in every stream. So if you have 80 times six streams, which will give you 460 champions in a year. When you multiply 460 times 37, you get 17,760 champions in a year.
And we have a target for each champion to train two Nigerians on a basic digital literacy, which will give you, at the end of the month, our average is more every champion to train 60 Nigerians on a basic digital literacy.
And, in a year, we have an average target of 600. When you multiply 17,760 by 600, you get 10,600,000+ in a year. So we want to train on digital literacy.
Those champions go to a marketplace to train marketplace woman, and they go to our religious places and meet our senior citizens to train them on basic digital literacy. Then we have the formal education where we worked on the Minister of Education and developed the content for digital literacy and curriculum for primary and secondary school, which has been approved by the Council of Education. Now, the next stage is to train our teachers on how to start teaching digital literacy in our formal education.
For universities, we have done a pilot with the university, in collaboration with Cisco. Cisco builds content for us based on the NDLF, and the content has been put online where a student can take those courses. They get Cisco certification as well as a credit unit for their degree programme.
So this has become a general studies in the university, and we're working with the NUC, the Nigeria University Commission to make digital skills and literacy a general study in all of our university so the students will learn tech the same way we teach mathematics and English.
The last one is about workforce readiness. That one we are targeting for the formal sector. If we embed digital literacy and skills into our education, our target is to train 15 million students by 2027.
Then, for the workforce readiness, we've already worked with the head of civil service and made digital skills a mandatory for being in the service. If you're in the service, it's a requirement for you to get promotion.
And we're working with them to train all public servants. We use the same Cisco account, and we're working with other nationals to achieve that.
And these are the challenges.
Because of the time, I will just keep them.
This is a pilot for the informal sector. So far, we've trained more than 200,000 Nigerians. We started the pilot last year, in November, in 12 states. This month, we're scaling up to 36 please FCT. That's 37 states.
And these are challenges in the formal sector. And we have challenges also for the workforce readiness.
Then we are also, as part of the implementation, developing a framework where we have all stakeholders, including Big Tech, development partners, and other government agencies. So we've developed ‑‑ we established the technological working group to help us achieve that and also help in data collection because we have many organisations doing a lot but in silos. Nobody is keeping record. Like, we have our sister agency, NCC, they have about nine initiatives they are doing around digital literacy and skills.
Then we have other partners like the Ministry is driving the 3 million tech talent.
And we have other partners who have trained more than 12 million Nigerians on this.
So thank you.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you very much.
(Applause)
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: We will also want you to respond to policy question number one, but I think you have given us an extensive presentation that has actually given us the answers that we require because we wanted to know how can Nigeria's digital literacy for all models serve as a blueprint for other nations regarding cost‑effective digital literacy initiatives that serves populations.
You have spoken about a national agenda, alignment, proper implementation strategies, collaborative and robust research with other agencies, a youthful population that you believe Nigeria should take advantage of to grow the journey.
The framework, including the youth, is seen in your policy and driving the programme and driving the curriculum of formal education by embedding digital literacy and working with the Ministry of Education and its subsidy agencies and also working with the head of the Public Service Commission to ensure that every public servant is trained.
Thank you, sir.
(Applause)
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: On that note, I would like to move to policy question two.
Ms. Judith Hellerstein is sitting to my right, is the founder of Hellerstein and Associates.
She has experience with broadband buildout and ‑‑ law and Internet governance issues.
She'll be giving us insights because she has worked with various governments and regulatory agencies and has also been a policymaker in the United States. She will give us insights to responding to some of the steps that Nigeria has taken.
Possibly give insights on things we can look for as a country.
>> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Thank you so much.
And thank you to my dear friend, Mary, who invited me to be on the panel.
So I was asked to talk about the frameworks as well as international collaborations to manage to ensure affordable and inclusive digital access.
So when we first look at the land stream, we need to first of all look at are there the right policy frameworks in place, not only looking at whether there's a UAS policy, a broadband policy.
We need to be working collaboratively in the region and with others on cybersecurity policy and cybercrime issues. We're all one nation. We don't want Nigeria to be known as the King of Spam. We want Nigeria to be known for all the five pillars they were talking about and all the work they've been doing and affordable access.
We want the focus on meaningful connectivity. By that, we mean not only is access affordable, but it's also what percentage of the populations have smart devices and can actually do their work independently?
And with that, I love the discussion of the pillars because you're breaking it down between gender, persons with disabilities, and other areas so we can track many of the problems we find in countries, which is where they may have a policy, there's no metrics behind it. If you're looking at a broadband plan and how you're going to do about it, you do not just focus on the plan aspect. You should focus on how it could be a strategic framework to tie in all those pillars together and then how the objectives could be built in so that you could have metrics to track how well you're doing so that you can resteer the country a different way if the metrics are not coming out correctly.
To do that, you need to have the data.
And so you have to work with other agencies within the country to get the data to match your objectives.
And with that, much of this data is often tracked ‑‑ like they track how many cell phones and how many other ones, but they don't necessarily break down, and we need to break down how many have gone ‑‑ how many programmes are looking at small businesses? How is the onset of small devices in there? We need to be tracking all those different things to show how well we're doing achieving our goals.
When I talk about integrated framework, it's not just a connectivity policy. We need to track the affordability. We need to track digital government. We need to track all those different items, digital economy ‑‑ that make up the digital economy and that we all work together.
You may want to look at cybercrime but also a ‑‑ once policy. Those are important because every time roads are being built in rural areas or other areas, we need to lay down fiber. So we need a coordinated effort within all the areas, rural provinces and local governments in Nigeria, that when the roads are being put out, like for building roads, electricity, that fiber is put down.
As we're doing most of this, there's reliance on data protection.
Do we have data sharing with each agency and also work with agencies to overcome the cultural issues.
You may have a perfect plan on paper, but if it's not being implemented correctly, if other agencies are not tracking this information and they say, oh, well, we're doing it differently. We've always been doing it this way, and it's a better way. Well, we need everybody working together because until we have a collaborative effort, we're not going to have an easy wheel in doing it.
Other policies, consumer protections. We had different protections for consumers when we were in a non‑broadband world, a non‑digital world. But the problem is many of these same laws that protect the consumers are not brought into the digital era.
So besides misinformation and disinformation, cyberbullying is a big problem in the schools. We have a lot of issues of child protection. We have a lot of issues with consumer protection. How are consumers protected against fraud and misrepresentation?
We also have how the children are protected, not just for online safety but identity fraud because children and teens are the most apt for identity fraud, and then they cannot become productive members of society later when they have been hacked and all of their identity has been stolen.
So they have to be sort of looked at with that eye.
So you have to look at so many different areas.
Lastly, I want to touch on the regulatory scheme. We need an open regulatory framework. We need to have licensing for open licensing. We need to not only ‑‑ what we want to get ‑‑ the goal is to get connectivity in all parts of the country, and to do that, we need to rely on different types of networks, not just mobile networks or fixed networks, but do we have infrastructure? Do we have spectrum licensing so that community networks or ‑‑ social purpose licensing is out there. Because to reach smaller communities, we don't want to use the same ‑‑ they may not need a large mobile network because they can't afford it. What we need is a community network or social purpose licensing.
So the framework should be there so smaller companies that want to service smaller regions can easily get licenses without a high cost or no cost so they can share ‑‑ so they can cover these areas. Then, as they grow, we look at different licensing frameworks.
So those are some of the things that we need to address.
I could be talking on this for a long time, but I'm just giving you certain frameworks that we do need to address on these issues.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you so much, Judith.
My take from your presentation: We should not just be ‑‑ policymaking shouldn't stop at policymaking. There should be collaboration to drive policymaking across government agencies, data sharing, reviewing our existing laws to ensure that they cover the digital era, tracking of efforts to ensure that all stakeholders work together.
And then, of course, robust cybersecurity, engagement, and implementation of cybersecurity policies and laws to protect Nigerians as well as changing the perception that would say that this is the spam capital of the world.
>> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Right, yes. And I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the efforts of education and in providing ICT training in the schools. We need to change the education curriculum. We need to focus on how do we teach digital literacy to kids? It's not too late to start in elementary school, but we need to start in elementary and build it up into the latter schools so that we create the background for these students to take later jobs because our engineers are coming from Nigeria. We need to build them up. We need the education to start early.
Some people may not go to a traditional tertiary education. They may go to a trade school and go to other places, but we need to make sure that in all these academies, we're building up the skills that are necessary for the workforce.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you very much, Judith.
To take our next intervention would be Mr. Yomi Arowosafe. He has 26 years of experience spanning oil and gas and has served as an expert in universal service, access, project management, compliance, monitoring and enforcement consumer affairs and stakeholder management.
He will be responding to the question on: What strategies can policymakers do to bridge the gap between digital literacy and advanced technological skills development, ensuring workforce readiness for the digital economy.
As earlier stated, digital literacy policies and interventions across most of the sectors within the communications industry.
And one of the things that they have done is to try to harness and collaborate amongst themselves.
He will share his insights within the fund and the NCC.
>> YOMI AROWOSAFE: Thank you very much. Good morning, Distinguished Senator and the Honourable Chair Committee and the NITDA and distinguished guests.
Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity. I'm delighted to present on this issue.
And just to go straight to it in due of time, to bridge the gap between basic digital literacy and advanced technological skills, policymakers are adopting a tiered approach that building foundational skills, true community‑based programmes, and we have something similar in the universal Service Provision Fund for laboratories like the TIDC and other comparable agencies.
These help to level and upscale and can now lead to a programme that we have called Emerging Technology Centre.
So these kind of programmes help to upskill and help for workers to develop their readiness for digital economy.
Other areas that we can look at is to ensure inclusive access focusing on rural access, women, people living with disability, and underserved youths. There should be a concerted effort towards looking at policies that will encourage or ensure inclusiveness in these areas that I just mentioned.
And, at the same time, to integrate the I will asks from our educational system.
Some of our educational system needs to now have some digital skills embedded in the system to encourage people ‑‑ students to have some basic knowledge that will now improve and develop their skills towards their future engagement and interaction.
This, too, can help to align industry needs, to promote apprenticeship and on‑the‑job training.
In this area, if you have basic knowledge, if you send somebody to areas for apprenticeship, they have some understanding of basic knowledge, and that will improve and help them for future engagement.
In other areas that we can look at for policymakers to adopt to bridge this is to promote lifelong learning and rescaling supports online learning platforms.
We have quite a lot of them in the digital space and probably to partner with tech companies to offer scalable training programmes.
These kind of training programmes, in any form, can help to help the environment develop into working ‑‑ the economy.
We need to leverage on public‑private partnership by collaborating with industry players like the private tech hub firms, start‑ups, and academia, to develop regular curricular and embed digital skills into formal education at all levels. And that will go a long way to support the basic knowledge that is needed to develop the skills.
At the same time, continuous engagement and teacher training and access to digital tools will help create a pipeline of digitally competent citizens equipped for the demands of the evolving digital landscape.
And an offer of internship job placement and ‑‑ finance hubs, boot camps, et cetera, these are engagement that brings the youthful population to help get them engaged and to improve ‑‑ help them in the readiness for digital economy.
Concerted policies should be put in place in these areas to support the digital economy and this area.
So I think, at this point, I will put this.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you, Yomi Arowosafe.
I would like to go to our next speaker. Just a minute, please.
Our next speaker, Mr. Poncelet Illeleji. He's in computer science and is involved with ICT as a tool for sustainable development and is the lead of ‑‑ labs. He's served and covered areas like ICT, digital learning, health informatics.
Today, he will be giving his voice by responding to and telling us how national digital literacy initiatives can be scaled up while maintaining quality and measuring digital impact.
>> PONCELET ILLELEJI: Thank you. Good morning, moderator. Good morning, all.
If we look at all the presentations today, even the introductions from the Honorable Senator Member of House and the DG, Director General, everything reflects on policy. And you have to move all of these policy frameworks into implementation.
But there's one thing the late professor Quasi (phonetic) said. He said, Touch the data and it will confess to anything.
Let's take the Nigerian scenario this way. 37 million Nigerians are on TikTok. That is about 15% of the population.
In the whole of West Africa, you have about 41 million on TikTok. So out of that, 37 million are on TikTok in Nigeria. And it just shows what is being done and how the average Nigerian appreciates digital literacy with all the policies being put in place.
But to drive these policies being put in place, one of the core essence is professional teacher development.
I believe that NITDA should have to have programmes that will directly involve the School of Education and the ‑‑ institutes. It should be developed because, at the end of the day, the disparities is so large that an average teacher in most parts of Nigeria, in rural Nigeria, might not have the right digital literacy skills to be able to compete on an equal level playing field with your teachers in ‑‑ there's grass roots initiatives able to take those policies down to the grass roots, focusing on teachers.
With all the policies you've learned from, UNESCO has the ICT Competency Framework for teachers based on open educational resources. And this is what that model can be used. They're all open educational resources that can be able to be used to put them on the platform, learning platform.
And the Ministry of Education needs to be able to rule tools that will help teachers at the training level and to advance education.
We should also note that when we look at the overall what NITDA is doing, in terms of working with various tech holders in the country, by 2027, you want 95% Nigerians trained. When you look at the African Union Digital Transformation Strategy, it is in place. It has to start at the grass roots level so when you meet any Nigerian anywhere, in any remote village, the person has the skills, and we need to use online tools to help them.
When I mentioned, at the beginning of quoting the data of the amount of Nigerians on TikTok, most of them are monetising TikTok to create a job for them.
So just imagine having video content on digital literacy on TikTok. You already know you get 37 million people following you or more.
So we have to be able to use those social media platforms, which the youth of Nigeria really follow, to put educational content out there.
We have to also work with what is already existing because ‑‑ with my computer science background, I'm traditional and believe in the power of radios. You go around and there's the BBC services. Everybody likes to listen to the traditional radio.
The last thing I will say is that most of our hardware is still imported. We also have to look at working with our tech communities to try to see how we can be manufacturing low‑cost devices so that the average person can be able to have those devices to access all these resources that will improve their lives in line with their digital transformation strategy of the African Union.
Thank you very much.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you. He has asked us to move from policy to action, professional to development, decrease the digital divide, increase the ICT competency framework for teachers. Proper alignment, he's happy to note that the Nigerian framework is properly aligned with the African Union Framework.
Pushing digital learning trainings as well and tech companies to promote the ‑‑
At this time, we'll invite ‑‑ I don't know if there's someone from the Library Internet Governance Forum here.
Liberian Internet Governance Forum.
This intervention should be limited to two minutes each.
>> Thank you so much. Thank you to the Senator and the Honorable as well as the DG for the brilliant presentation on Nigeria so far.
What I can present right now is the roadmap that DG presented is a very comprehensive roadmap. In terms of emerging economy, Nigeria is ahead of every country in the West Africa region, in terms of digital literacy or digital transformation. It's more way to ensure that these policies are domesticated beyond the normal big cities in Nigeria. We know of the bigger ones. We believe that a holistic approach to other cities outside the normal one is also key to this. And I think to ensure digital literacy where everyone is not just left behind, we also need to use the data.
We'll have to see what has been targeted, in terms of this roadmap as well, is also to be achieved.
We look at what countries like Nigeria is doing because we believe it has a benchmark, in terms of policymaking. It's a benchmark with things achieved in due course.
So this is my summation for now.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you very much, Liberian IGF.
>> Thank you. Greetings from Ghana. Many will ask why Ghana is on this platform. I've said we are cousins. Call me Salisu (phonetic).
The people who are predominantly based in our region are believed to have migrated from ‑‑ so we are cousins. So these discussions are quite interrelated.
Mr. Poncelet laid the foundation, but I'm here to talk about the youth. How do we energise the youth to be part of this conversation? This conversation takes different dimensions and shapes and different colors. How do we energise them in attempts in even basic tools to get their starts? Talking about the Internet and also policy communication, they say public perception is always seen as the obvious. Many of you perceive that, after all, I get into digital literacy. What next? Work readiness.
The DG led a wonderful presentation. It's very comprehensive. But implementation, West Africa, we're a powerhouse when it comes to leading the force. Companies in Nigeria, similarly, we could just bring our energies together. I would like to quote Chin ‑‑ so let's pull our energies together so we can just push all the digital literacy conversation for it.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you from the Ghana IGF.
We'll open the floor for another five minutes, for online participants and audience in the room. Each intervention, we're going to take two from the room. And if there's anyone online, that's fine. But this has to be limited to two minutes each, not above two minutes.
>> FLOOR: Thank you very much. I hope you can hear me. My name is Abdul ‑‑ from the University of Learning in Nigeria.
My contribution is in terms of education. A lot of times, I believe that the country is doing a lot when it comes to trying to educate the population, but we also need to look at it from the other side. Coming from the university, I've seen that a lot of youth these days do not really believe in education. One thing they believe in is the fact that there's always a fast lane.
When there was mention about putting some of these education materials on TikTok, TikTok has the ability to just swipe and just continue swiping. But you see the content is not the social ‑‑ the dancing, the money‑making thing. They just flip through.
I want to give you a quick example. There was no certificate teaching in the university, and it was discovered. And when we invited the student, they said, yes, we like this person so much.
Why?
He would come to the class and teach them and then the remaining part of the class, he would teach how to make money. And that's why they love him so much.
So we need to look at these things from the other side to make sure that we encourage you to have this ability to learn or have the zeal to learn, not just making money.
Thank you very much.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you very much.
>> FLOOR: Thank you very much. Your Excellencies and Chair.
I'm the Executive Member of ‑‑ I was expecting to see the plan to collaborate with the secretary on promoting ‑‑ for Nigerians. This was mentioned by the DG. So I know there's a conversation going on to make sure every business has a start with a domain name, but it was wanted to become a reality beyond just the regular conversation.
Also enforcing existing businesses ‑‑ existing organisations doing business with the government to make sure that they're promoting digital literacy.
Thank you very much.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you very much for that intervention.
We will go online now, please.
>> KUNLE OLORUNDARE: Okay. The online has been buzzing, and there are a lot of comments and questions. I will quickly go through the comments for the panellists to listen to and probably react to them.
After that, I will give the floor, depending on how much time we have.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Mr. Moderator, we have only nine minutes. So for online, we'll take only three minute, please.
>> James: Okay. Let me go to the questions.
There's mention of the fact that there's need for us to ensure enforcement while we are implementing, and there's a multistakeholder approach. So the vice president of Internet Society. The efforts should be collaborative. Then a fellow at the school of the Internet governance ‑‑ I want to quote this. It's catchy. What gets measured is what gets done. Tracking metrics, moving from policy on paper to enforcement. That's what she said.
Then there are questions. The first question is from Mr. Kibiya (phonetic), and I hope your panellists will be able to do justice to that.
Thank you to all the panellists for your insight. I would like to suggest an approach and hear your thoughts. What about introducing digital literacy right from ‑‑ ‑‑ interesting. Young children seem to pick up skills quicker than senior citizens. On the other hand, digital skills, teaching to senior citizens requires more patience and time, partly due to life challenges that affect their focus and learning.
Wouldn't focusing on children early give us a more sustainable, long‑term impact? Why not find ways to support all of that generation?
Please note that.
And then the second question is this. From Martha, what strategy can be employed to effectively engage people in uninstructed settings such as the market women, out‑of‑school youth, street vendors, among others, and improve their digital literacy?
And the last question posted online is this. Information sorted, literacy education achieved. How do we plan to close the divide of device gap, especially because of cost of ownership plus we don't produce most of these devices. What can be done?
I just copied the question. I don't want to add my own words.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you.
>> KUNLE OLORUNDARE: Thank you very much.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you.
>> I want to respond to the University of ‑‑ the majority of the content produced on TikTok ‑‑ forget content that relates to entertainment or culture. Most of them are educational. And you have a lot of young Nigerians who have created different contents, and this is evidence‑based from business coaching to learning mathematics. There's a Nigerian I met years ago in Hong Kong that teaches foreigners who come to China how to speak Chinese with over 1 million followers, just learning Chinese, subscribed.
So being the son of a mathematician and knowing how education has evolved, whereby Big Tech companies are looking at first degrees necessary. It's about skill sets. That's what NITDA is trying to do, giving competencies in digital literacy that will have ripple effects.
My last thing I will say on this, during the COVID period in Gambia, we taught how to sell fish. They're using digital ‑‑ to market products. We have to get out of the notion that's academically inclined can be successful. Most of the successful today in most parts of Africa are from the ‑‑ sector and with digital skills, it would up their game.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you.
Very quickly, just in 30 seconds, Judith?
>> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Yes. I wanted to answer some questions placed by our online viewers. As I mentioned in the presentation, for the affordable devices, they're extremely important. A lot of the work can be done with the UAS fund. Having that support, subsidies for affordable devices, but also working with other communities in nonprofit and others to give affordable devices or affordable computers or other things during subsidy programmes because that is where you can do it.
But unless you have ‑‑ these subsidy programmes need to be backed up by data. If you can show what the impact of giving away these subsidies and devices to people, we can then see how it led to affordability and how it led to that.
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: Thank you. Thank you, Judith.
I don't know. We have just three minutes to close. I think we should actually be summarising what we have heard today, and I'm going to do that in less than a minute.
Before I do that, I would like to recognise the presence of Honorable Shola (phonetic) from the House of Representatives.
(Applause)
>> IBISO KINGSLEY‑GEORGE: With that, I would just like to state that we've had a very robust conversation. Unfortunately, time did not allow us to ‑‑ time did not allow us to engage a lot more, which we think would have been the best thing to do. If we continue to talk about digital literacy, we're not going to leave here because I know that is a burning issue for Africans and particularly in Nigeria, seeing a lot of agencies are involved in digital literacy programmes.
To this end, I will say that the panellists, as well as the audience and online interventions have come to a position of speaking on policymaking and implementation, research, carrying the youths along, and ensuring local content to making affordable devices available and then collaboration amongst agencies and with the different ‑‑ collaboration amongst agencies as well as collaboration with the different populations of demographics of population, the women, the people living with disabilities, and all others.
Okay. I would like to also ‑‑ would like to recognise the presence of Distinguished Deket (phonetic) Planq (phonetic) and Shi ‑‑
On that note, thank you. I would like to call it a day. Thank you to all of our panellists.
(Applause)