The Federal Government through the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has announced plans to build Artificial Intelligence (AI) developers’ communities across the country.
The Director-General of NITDA, Mr Kashifu Inuwa, disclosed this while receiving instructors and some beneficiaries of NITDA AI Developers Training (NAIDT) in Abuja.
According to him, the communities would help shape the future of technology in the country.
The AI training was organized by NITDA, through its subsidiary, National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR) in conjunction with Google Developers Group (GDG). Inuwa said the program, being the pilot phase in Abuja, had achieved its purpose and would be replicated in other states.
The vision
Highlighting the government’s plans for AI developers in Nigeria, Kashifu said:
- “The vision is to create a community of developers across the country where people can come, learn and after that, they can teach others or start their businesses and impact society.
- I believe we can start with three states this year, then strategize on how to extend it to other states; with time, extend it to local government areas.
- This is driven by my firm belief that in Nigeria, our most valuable asset as a nation is our human capital.”
He added that the NAIDT platform could be used to create indigenous super applications like generative AI and language modelling, then a Proof-of-Concept (POC) could be done with NITDA and then escalated government-wide. According to him, it will encourage the government’s digitization agenda.
AI training
Also speaking, the National Director of NCAIR, Mr Ya’u Garba, said the initiative which was one year old was aimed at training one million developers under the theme: “Learn, Teach, and Earn.” Garba revealed that the training consisted of three levels which included Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced.
- “In the basics, we teach what is necessary to become a good programmer, we teach Python which is the language science.
