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Executive Director, Tech4Dev, Diwura Oladepo, in this interview with Nosa Alekhuogie, speaks about the need to empower rural and underserved communities with basic digital skills. Excerpts:
Tech4Dev and Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), in the United Kingdom, signed an agreement to train people in Northern Nigeria on basic digital skills. What must have informed this initiative, and what does it seek to achieve?
In a time of social distancing and government-enforced lockdowns to curtail the spread of COVID-19, digital technology became the enabler of the continuation of work, education, and communication. But for millions of people who are unable to use technology, the offline world is economically and socially isolating. COVID-19 has further illuminated the ‘digital divide’, which is even more pronounced in Nigeria and worse off in poor rural clusters of Northern Nigeria. Therefore, it has become pertinent, especially on this path to the new normal, to focus
Technology for Social Change and Development Initiative (Tech4Dev), and the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), have signed a resilience training agreement to carry out basic digital literacy for rural clusters in the north.
This is in efforts to empower vulnerable groups in rural clusters in Northern Nigeria with the digital skills required for the future of work and advanced learning for the 21st century. x
The programme is meant to introduce learners in underserved communities and vulnerable groups in Northern Nigeria to digital literacy, with the intent of equipping them with the basic digital knowledge required to succeed in the 21st-century and the emerging new normal from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Training will last for 12 weeks in 10 rural clusters across 10 states in the north comprising 50 per cent vulnerable women and girls, 30 per cent Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) and 20 per cent individuals of other vulnerable groups.
The Executive Director at Tech4Dev, Diwura Oladepo, who spoke at a virtual media briefing, stressed the need to increase the number of digital literate vulnerable populations and people living in under-served communities in northern Nigeria.
The Head of the UK Government’s Digital Access Programme and Country Adviser, Idongesit Udoh, said various policies in Nigeria have identified digital skills as key to economic prosperity for all Nigerians.