The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Mallam Kashifu Abdullahi has said that Fintech startups in Nigeria have been the drivers of the country’s recent performance, especially in the area of environmental, social, and governance.
He noted that the federal government has been doing well in enabling fintechs in the country to thrive, especially with the application of the developmental regulation approach and enabling policies toward co-creating the tech ecosystem.
The NITDA DG disclosed this while speaking at the Digital Finance Summit, a sideline event of the ongoing GITEX 2022 in Dubai, UAE.
He further noted that 2021 was no doubt a remarkable year for tech startups in Nigeria, as more than 35 percent of direct investments to Africa came to Nigeria, adding that the achievement was not mainly by publicity but by structural design.
In his words, “In 2019, the president redesignated and expanded our ministry to cover digital economy and the Honorable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami formulated the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy for a digital Nigeria; so, that set the stage for the tech ecosystem in Nigeria.
“Between 2017 to 2019, we have seen in Nigeria where farmers access money from the government and also, during the COVID-19, a lot of people could not access the released funds and when you deliver it using cash, it costs much.
“The start-ups are doing fantastically well, but also the government needs to level the playing field for them to plan better.”
The NITDA boss went further by stressing on the need for the government to work with the World Bank, United Nations, and other agencies, to enable them to improve infrastructure for Fintechs for them to reach the unreachable to get them connected.
It should be recalled that Investors King on January 10, 2022, reported that the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) partnered with Nigeria’s NITDA, to launch iHatch a startup incubation scheme designed to expand the number of innovation-driven enterprises by Nigerian youths.
