Telecom
NITDA Unveils SRAP 2.0 @Omniverse Summit
Kashifu Inuwa, director general, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has emphasized the pivotal role of collaboration with stakeholders in the technology ecosystem to achieve a resilience and prosperous digital transformation for Nigeria by unveiling the NITDA’s Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan 2.0.
He spoke at the Omniverse Summit, held at the Landmark Event Centre, Lagos.
Inuwa highlighted the necessity of shared goals, resources, and knowledge to make a lasting impact on Nigeria’s digital future.
“Our vision for Nigeria is to digitally empower the nation by thriving on innovation and fostering inclusive economic growth through technology,” Inuwa stated.
While discussing the pillars in the Strategic Road-map and Action Plan (2024-2027) SRAP 2.0, Inuwa stressed the importance of collaboration among the stakeholders.
According to the NITDA Director-General, the road-map focuses on eight strategic pillars, targeted at accelerating digital transformation of all critical sectors of the economy as directed by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
He maintained that all the pillars in the SRAP 2.0 resonate with the strategic pillars of Ministry of Communications, Innovations and Digital Economy blueprint tagged “Accelerating our Collective Prosperity through Technical Efficiency” which are Knowledge, Policy, Infrastructure, Innovation, entrepreneurship, and Capital, and Trade.
He revealed that the first pillar, fostering digital literacy and cultivating talent has an ambitious goal of achieving 70% digital literacy by 2027 through the implementation of National Digital Literacy Framework as well as developing technical talents which is being implemented through one of the Ministry’s initiatives “the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT)”, designed to address the impending global talent deficit and position Nigeria as a leader in technological expertise.
Inuwa noted that the second pillar is to build a robust technology research system, aimed at putting Nigeria’s at the 25 percentile in global ranking in research in six key areas of AI, IoT, Robotics, Additive Manufacturing, blockchain and UAVs.
The third pillar emphasises the need to strengthen policy implementation and legal framework, with all ecosystem stakeholders contributing to achieving national goals.
He said, “Promoting inclusive access to digital infrastructure and services forms the fourth pillar which aims at connecting the unconnected by investing in learning centers and innovation hubs across the country.”
“Strengthening Cybersecurity and enhancing digital trust is the fifth pillar. This addresses the importance of instilling confidence in digital platforms for its users,” he said.
He identified the sixth pillar as focusing on plans to nurture an innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem, which will promote synergy in industry and an enabling platform for digital transformation.
“While the seventh pillar is to forge strategic partnerships, and collaborations with external stakeholders as evident with the active partnership NITDA is building with the Omniverse platform, the eight and last pillar of the SRAP is directed to cultivate a vibrant organizational culture and agile workforce within NITDA”. he added.
“We believe that by working together, we can transform Nigeria into a global digital powerhouse,” Inuwa declared.
He subsequently invited stakeholders to download the soft copy of the road-map, providing a QR code for easy access, and encouraged feedback to refine the document for collective success.
Inuwa assured the commitment of the government to create enabling policies for citizens to thrive.
According to him,“The aim is to position Nigeria among the top 25 in artificial intelligence, IoT, UAV, robotics, Blockchain, and additive manufacturing, propelling the nation into a prominent role in the global digital economy.”
The Omniverse Summit is targeted at driving the digital economy on the continent. The summit explores the narratives about the Africa and Africans, with a focus on how to regain control of these narratives to re-frame the future of our economies, societies, and geopolitics.
Obi Asika, the convener of the Omniverse Summit along with his team members, Charles Emembolu, Dr. Thwueba and Isioma Udeozo stated passionately during a panel session tagged “Why Omniverse? Explained that the Omniverse is a collaborative platform, which is designed to bring people together. They mentioned that one of the core objectives of the program was to bring different segments of the ecosystem like the academia, tech, startups, gaming people, music industry, film industry, television industry, the arts and arts culture among others together.
In their submission, they noted that the move is towards creating a platform for anyone to have a clear understanding into what is happening in Nigeria, Africa, and the world.
Mr. Will Stevens, the U.S Consul General, in his address affirmed that the dynamic digital innovation ecosystem in Nigeria has led to the creation of this crucial platform, emphasizing the nation’s role as Africa’s largest economy and democracy.
Mr. Williams stressed a paradigm shift in collaboration, moving from discussing what can be done for Africa to what can be achieved together. He added that the focus is to ensuring African nations have a significant voice in global policy discussions, particularly addressing shared challenges like climate change, food insecurity, and global pandemics.
He called for a permanent African representation in the UN Security Council underlines the need for African solutions to global problems, emphasizing collaboration on a worldwide scale.
He noted that Nigeria, as a key player in driving innovation, faces challenges such as safeguarding intellectual property and addressing exchange rate risks noting that, “the partnership between the U.S. and African tech startups is substantial, with around 60% of venture capital in Nigeria originating from the United States.”
“However, there is an expressed need to protect intellectual property locally and create laws to support startups, ensuring innovators can safeguard their creations within the country. The imperative is to foster collaboration that goes beyond geographical boundaries and promotes a collective effort to tackle shared global challenges,” he concluded.
MTN Nigeria’s commitment to digital innovation took center stage at MarkHack 4.0, the annual marketing and technology conference held at Landmark Event Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos, on Friday, May 23, 2025, with the theme ‘Experience Ignited: Fueling the Customer’s Journey’.
L-R: Akinbulejo Onabolu, Head, Enterprise Segment, MTN Nigeria; Eneyi Obi, Global Chief Marketing Officer, Rise; Tobi Olanisimi, Marketing Manager, AB InBev; Martha Kayode, Marketing Head, PZ Cussonz; Sulaiman Shaibu, CEO, BFT Consulting Service and Daniel Adeyemi, Managing Editor, Condia Business at the MarkHack 4.0 Conference held at the Landmark Event Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos on Friday, May 23, 2025.
In a celebration of innovation, technology, and storytelling, the company also took home the award for Best Use of Data in a Marketing Campaign at the Nigeria MarTech (MarkHack 4.0) Awards Night. This award recognizes brands that have successfully transformed data into compelling narratives and actionable insights to meaningfully engage their audiences.
Akinbulejo Onabolu, Senior Manager, Segment Management, Enterprise Business at MTN, joined a panel to discuss the power of immersive technologies on consumer behaviour. Drawing from MTN’s launch of its 5G Digital Experience Centre in Abuja last year, Onabolu highlighted the rapid evolution of immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) stating “Our 5G centre is a sandbox for our customers to come and see how technology can shape things. At the launch event, we unveiled a smart city to customers, clients and dignitaries in attendance, with gaming and other tech experiences.”
On the intersection of data, AR and VR, he added: “Co-creating with MTN takes our minds to a platform where different partners, companies and creators can bring their buildings, products and businesses for people to see via augmented reality and connectivity, just swiping through and following through that journey.
“As a part of impacting our customer’s lives, a few years ago, we also played around with the Metaverse and we ended up creating some of our back-office processes with some of our customer journeys on augmented reality and virtual reality such that a customer somewhere can engage with a virtual agent to solve real life problems and integrating that back into our operating systems. As an organization, at a lot of our events, you will find a lot of AR and VR experiences.”
Speaking on how MTN is embedding immersive technology into its day-to-day operations, he explained that the company is prioritizing both internal capability development and external engagement. “85% of our organization has undergone extensive training on AI and that already is a great addition to our daily lives. We’re using it to do things differently, developing user journeys and brainstorming different things. In terms of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, we are working with organizations to develop training programs which we use internally.”
He described the bases for this tech as stable connectivity, high bandwidth, high speed and low latency. “Over the past year, we’ve doubled our 5G capacity across the entire country. Wherever you are, you’ll probably start to pick up 5G. With our FibreX service, we’re going way beyond connectivity to create the systems and platforms to support the ecosystem, AR and VR. In addition to this, we’re also engaging regulatory systems to start to tease this out and build the proper governance.”
The session, moderated by Daniel Adeyemi, Managing Editor at Condia Business, also featured insights from leaders in FMCG, consulting, and global marketing, all underscoring the transformative potential of immersive technologies for Africa’s future.
MTN Nigeria has announced a massive capital expenditure (CAPEX) drive for 2025, nearly doubling its investment to almost 900 billion Naira, as it seeks to significantly enhance network service quality in major cities like Lagos and Abuja and extend improvements to other areas.
Karl Toriola
This financial commitment, up from a combined total of approximately 440 billion Naira spent in 2023 and 2024, was detailed by MTN Nigeria CEO, Dr. Karl Toriola, during a recent interview on Arise TV.
Toriola highlighted that a key focus of the increased CAPEX will be on “putting additional capacity in a city like Lagos, particularly in Abuja, where you have a lot of buildings coming up, you need additional sites because there are coverage issues.”
Beyond these critical urban centres, the investment aims to bolster network resilience and ensure power stability for its infrastructure nationwide. This includes proactively addressing site outages by ensuring timely payment for operational necessities such as diesel for generators, a persistent challenge in the Nigerian operating environment
The CEO outlined the comprehensive nature of the upgrade process, which involves “placing orders formally, opening letters of credit, and then the equipment gets shipped in and installed.” He added that where necessary, MTN will be “acquiring new sites” and “laying fiber to the base station to create better stability.”
While the immediate CAPEX is geared towards improving existing service quality and capacity, this investment aligns with MTN’s broader goals, which include enhancing financial inclusion in underserved rural areas, suggesting a long-term vision for network expansion and service improvement that extends beyond metropolitan areas.
Customers are expected to begin experiencing the positive impact of these investments with a “significant improvement in quality of service” anticipated by the end of the second quarter or early in the third quarter of 2025, according to Toriola.
Airtel Nigeria, telecom service provider, has announced that its AI-powered Spam Alert Service issued over 9.6 million spam alerts between March 13 and May 20, 2025.
As part of its ongoing commitment to protecting customers from unwanted and potentially fraudulent communications, Airtel designed the AI Spam Alert service to analyze traffic patterns and detect anomalies.
In the period since launch the AI pinpointed a total of 9,667,008 SMS as potential spam messages in the two months after its launch.
Of these, the system identified 528,080 on-net (Airtel-to-Airtel) and 9,138,928 off-net (from other networks) numbers as suspected spam messages, demonstrating the scale of the threat and Airtel’s advanced processing capability.
Airtel Nigeria is a subsidiary of Airtel Africa.
Commenting on this development, Dinesh Balsingh, CEO, Airtel Nigeria, restated Airtel`s commitment to protecting its customers.
“This milestone demonstrates the strength of our AI-driven infrastructure in combating the growing menace of spam and scam calls. At Airtel Nigeria, we are focused on connecting Nigerians and ensuring their safety and confidence while using our network.
“We understand that trust is the cornerstone of digital communication. That’s why we’ve invested heavily in intelligent systems that not only detect potential threats but also learn and evolve with data. As threats become more sophisticated, so will our solutions. As a company, we remain focused on leading the industry in innovation and customer satisfaction, ensuring that every Nigerian can enjoy a safer and smarter digital experience,” Mr. Balsingh said.
The Spam Alert Service is part of Airtel Nigeria’s broader strategy to integrate artificial intelligence into its core offerings to deliver smarter and safer experiences for its customers across the country.
Recall that the Spam Alert Service was launched on March 13, 2025. A groundbreaking and free solution from Airtel, it notifies users in real-time of suspected spam SMS messages by analyzing over 250 parameters.
The Airtel AI Spam Alert Service is available to all Airtel subscribers on smartphones and feature phones.
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