Nigeria pitches AI-enabled services beyond traditional BPO
- NITDA says Nigeria should move beyond supplying talent for traditional outsourcing.
- Its director-general spoke at a Hire from Nigeria session during UNGA81.
- Project BRIDGE targets 90,000 kilometers of fiber infrastructure.
- Nigeria cites data protection, digital identity and sovereign cloud rules in its pitch.
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES — Nigeria is pitching itself as a source of higher-value, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled digital services rather than a supplier of workers for conventional business process outsourcing, as it competes for global investment and technology jobs.
The pitch pairs AI skills with the trust, security and regulatory certainty that companies look for when moving sensitive data and business processes across borders.
NITDA says talent alone is not enough
Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), made the case at a “Hire from Nigeria” session held on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA81), Leadership reported.
The session was organized by the Nigeria Economic and Trade Advancement Programme (NATEP), and Abdullahi appeared alongside Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment Jumoke Oduwole and Minister of Education Moruf Alausa.
“Our opportunity is not simply to supply talent to the world; it is to equip Nigerian talent with AI, trusted digital infrastructure and globally competitive capabilities to deliver higher-value services to the world,” Abdullahi said.
He said the goal should be a workforce able to understand, build and adapt emerging technologies, not only use them.
Fiber, cloud and data rules anchor Nigeria’s pitch
Abdullahi pointed to Project BRIDGE, which targets 90,000 kilometers of fiber infrastructure, and the government’s Cloud First Policy, which encourages private investment in computing infrastructure and AI factories.
He also cited frameworks covering data protection, digital identity, cybersecurity, digital infrastructure assurance, data classification, sovereign cloud and software quality assurance.
“Trust, security and regulatory certainty are essential to attracting global businesses and positioning Nigeria as a dependable destination for digital services,” Abdullahi said.
The Nigerian Communications Commission has identified fiber infrastructure, right-of-way challenges and power costs among the constraints on broadband expansion, the newspaper noted.
Abdullahi also warned that communities poorly represented in datasets risk being inadequately reflected in AI systems, and said Nigeria needed to help build those systems rather than only consume them.
For buyers weighing offshore outsourcing in Africa, Nigeria is moving its pitch from conventional business process outsourcing (BPO) capacity toward AI-augmented and IT-enabled services.
The test is whether connectivity, power and skills gaps close fast enough for Nigerian providers to compete with the top BPO companies worldwide on higher-value work.
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Disclosure: Outsource Accelerator uses AI tools in the backend of its editorial workflow. Every article is reviewed and verified by a human editor before publication.
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