Kashifu Inuwa, director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), says the agency is targeting to build Artificial Intelligence (AI) developers’ communities nationwide

Mr Inuwa, in a statement by Hadiza Umar, the spokesperson of the agency, said the community would help to shape the future of technology in the country.

He revealed this while receiving instructors and some beneficiaries of NITDA AI Developers Training (NAIDT) in Abuja.

The training was organised by NITDA, through its subsidiary, National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR), in conjunction with Google Developers Group (GDG).

“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 the society.

“I believe we can start with three states this year, then strategise on how to extend it to other states; with time, extend it to local government areas,” he said.

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 government’s digitisation agenda.

“Digitising government services will help the government save costs, as well as improve the efficiency of service delivery,” he said.

Ya’u Garba, national director of NCAIR, said the initiative, which was one year old, was aimed at training one million developers under the theme: “Learn, Teach, and Earn.”

Ibrahim Muhammed, a representative of the Google Developers Group (GDG), appreciated the director general and NITDA for their unwavering support throughout the training programme.

(NAN)