Dr. Vincent Olatunji, CEO of Nigeria’s NITDA (Photo via tribuneonline.ng)
The National Information Technology Development Agency, Nigeria’s IT clearinghouse, and the National Information Technology Agency, Ghana’s agency responsible for implementing IT policies, have agreed to collaborate on common grounds as it affects both countries’ IT sector.
The two agencies met over the weekend in Accra, Ghana, to assess mutual areas of interest and how the two economic powerhouses in West Africa can leverage on ICT to better improve the economic potentials of these countries. Both countries are to work on agreeable terms to define the nature and scope of the partnership to cover among others: human capital development, ICT startups and entrepreneurship schemes, local content, cyber-security and smart city. The areas of cooperation will also cover mutual support for each country’s IT-related events or such public sector led IT events designed to draw investments and developments to the two countries.
“The need for us as neighbors and as developing countries to identify common goals and common strategies’ within the sub-region to approach issues as relating to IT is both important and desirous now so as to raise the economic fortunes of our two countries,” said the acting Director General /CEO of the NITDA, Dr. Vincent Olatunji.
On his part, the CEO of NITA, George Atta-Boateng said, “We welcome a partnership with Nigeria and see it as exigent to actualizing our own mandate as a counterpart IT agency in Ghana. We consider partnership as an essential element of growth and look to maximizing this partnership.”
According to Atta-Boateng, NITA was established in 2008 as an IT projects-based public service institution and has so far championed internet diffusion in Ghana as well as provide the framework for data warehousing for both public and private institutions in Ghana.
It is currently working to commission the 10, 000-seat BPO/Outsourcing center in Accra, touted to be the largest in West Africa as Ghana prepares to be a major hub for BPO/Outsourcing in West Africa. Atta-Boateng said NITA is relatively young compared to the NITDA and has had to draw on some inspiring input from NITDA in marshaling its own current structure as a policy-driven IT agency from its original orientation as a project-driven one.
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