In view of the fact that Lagos State has continued to maintain itself as a viable community with the strongest unicorn of innovation in the Nation, the Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa CCIE, has reiterated the Agency’s commitment towards giving the ecosystem the needed support to boost the sector’s contribution to the economy and strengthen the value chain.

He made the pledge during a dinner meeting with some key stakeholders of Lagos Ecosystem, including representatives from Microsoft, MasterCard, Norebase, among others.

Inuwa while suing for trust, and strengthening of the value chain deliberated on the best way to accelerate growth and support startups in the country, said “there are lots of distrust within the government and the ecosystem, so much that the only way to engender trust between the two entities is to have this conversation”.

The Director-General assured the group of his unrelenting support to the ecosystem which he maintained would be his return base upon retirement from government service, emphasised the need for collaborations across the board to achieve a faster and more sustainable digital economy.

“We cannot succeed in isolation; we need each other to succeed. Innovation is not distributed evenly across the world. Innovation and digital economy is about humans”.

“A company is as good as its next product and its products are as good as the person or people who make them. This underscores the relevance of talents. If you don’t have the requisite skills and talents, then it is no deal”, he added.

The DG seized the opportunity to share his thoughts on different issues bordering on investments, partnerships, commercialisation of innovations, enabling policies and acquisition of relevant skills as well as trainings.

“At NITDA, we are reenacting our act and laws to make it more robust so that we protect the ecosystem”, Inuwa stated.

The NITDA Boss whose friendly body language gave the forum some sort of a relaxed atmosphere was keen on listening to their opinions and suggestions on how to get the ecosystem perform much better.

“The sector we are in is dynamic and we must move with its pace, so we don’t play catch ups or get left far behind. We must disrupt the way we do things and bring to bear professionalism, innovations that will solve indigenous problems but have global impact”, the DG urged.

While taking turns to share their ideas and challenges, some of the representatives touched on diverse areas of concern and specialisations, including soliciting for government support in the development of hardware space, funding, talents, procurements, local content enforcement, mitigating gateways, policy timings and changes, data protection and management, digital skills framework, standardisation and others.

Reacting to their comments and questions, the Director-General extensively explained the efforts of NITDA under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and by extension, the Federal Government in addressing most of the issues deliberated.

The Start-up Bill was also on the front burner of his response as the DG quickly reminded them that most of the concerns raised would soon be rested, given the recent passage of the Bill into law by the National Assembly.

He assured the startups of a speedy and effective implementation of the bill to deal with the bottlenecks experienced and in the process, fast track the anticipated growth of the ecosystem.

Moreso, Inuwa highlighted the Code of Practice for Interactive Platforms as another document that is expected to engender appropriate monitoring to enforce compliance to established regulations guiding the sector, while seeking for their contribution to the document.

“We need to decide what and what are the right regulations so that every startup and industry player would have a Code of Practice that works for everyone and is adhered to the latter. Also, I think we need to form a union for Startup Ecosystem”, Inuwa added.

The engagement with Lagos ecosystem ended with a resolve by all parties to forge ahead against all odds but not just as an ecosystem but a more united and prepared for the future tasks.

The meeting was part of NITDA’s stride towards making Nigeria a talent hub for Africa and possibly the digital world, especially as there are several reports indicating a global talent shortage.

The Advocacy for Policy and Innovation (API) intelligence and policy platform has organized Nigeria’s First Content Moderation and Online Safety Summit. The hybrid event which held at The Envoy hotel in Abuja, saw a cross section of policy makers, tech giants, civil societies, and international legal and regulatory experts in the information technology ecosystem in conversation with an aim to proffer solutions to the ever growing influence of the internet on Nigerian citizens.

In attendance were the Honorable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Professor Isa Ali Pantami, representatives from the Office of the National Security Adviser, the Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), representatives of Big Tech companies including Meta Nigeria and Google Nigeria, as well as local and international attorneys, compliance regulators, digital activists, and heads of tech labs and startups.

The theme of the summit “The challenge for content moderation and the opportunity to improve online safety in Nigeria,” set the stage for an intersectional conversation among big tech companies including Meta Nigeria and Google Nigeria, as well as policy makers, civil societies, local and international lawyers and policy observers on content moderation.

Director of API, Kassim Sodangi stated in his remarks that the internet has changed the world in many advantageous ways, creating opportunities for young innovators like never before, yet has also brought up a plethora of bad actors who create and disseminate harmful content, harvest information of unsuspecting users for nefarious purposes, among other cybercrimes.

Sodangi opined that Nigeria is in the lead to create deeper and positive regulation in sub saharan Africa. He also said that the summit aims to establish a platform from which all stakeholders within the ecosystem can proffer solutions, examining extant laws and regulations, and assessing it’s relevance in today’s fast-paced information technology world.

Special guest of honor, Professor Pantami who was represented by the DG of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa, noted that the world has evolved to include a new form of power, in his view, big tech companies exist as faceless non-state actors with undue influence over the citizens, and said that regulators are always playing the catch-up game because of non-transparency of tech platforms

“As regulators, we must not allow any system to have unaccountable power over the people; regular engagement where big tech is transparent about their activities, and use of citizens’ data will help us to create regulation that balances between keeping online content in check and protecting individual freedom of expression,” he said.

Delivering her key address remotely, Executive Director of Internet Sans Frontières (Internet Without Borders; IWB), Julie Owono, stated that multi-systemic collaboration is intrinsic to finding solutions to content moderation that address the harms the internet and social media may bring without infringing in freedom of expression. She said Nigeria can lead the way on governance of content moderation on the continent by implementing policies made to enforce transparency to the public and the government, thereby, making accountability a mainstay in content moderation.

Google’s Government Affairs and Public Policy Manager, Dawn Dimowo, and Meta’s Public Policy manager, Meg Chang, along with several other panelists,
appraised the regulatory landscape for content moderation and the limitations of extant law in the Nigerian Constitution, and discussed potentials for deeper collaboration to improve safety in Nigeria’s online space.

By Maymunah Zubair