The Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, has said with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Nigeria’s economy could witness a 20 per cent growth annually, bringing the vision of a $1 trillion economy closer to reality even before the year 2030.
Inuwa spoke at the 3rd Economic Confidential Lecture themed, ‘Agenda for a Digital Global Economy,’ and presentation of three publications: “Diplomacy and Digital Innovation: Youths’ Insights, Healing Nigeria: A Chronicle of Health Reform and Hope,” and “Renewed Hope in Central Banking” authored by young Nigerians including two National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members on Wednesday in Abuja.
The NITDA boss insisted should Nigeria fully embrace technology, the country would not only drive exponential growth, national prosperity and inclusivity, but Nigeria would be well positioned to lead the economy of Africa.
He said: The President has a bold vision of making Nigeria a $1 trillion economy and we believe that with technology this is possible and we and we can even do more.
“Looking at the research, if we can automate 30 per cent of our task today with AI, that can lead to 20 per cent economic growth and Nigeria can easily achieve that because of our economy today is over $3487 billion.
“20 per cent is more than $140 billion so every year if you can add that, it’s possible to achieve $1 trillion economy even before 2030.
“That means our target of achieving $1 trillion economy is possible if we can adopt AI in Nigeria because anything we do today, AI can help to do 50% of that task.”
According to him, all Nigerians must have access to technology if Nigeria must achieve a $1 trillion economy.
“To help contribute actively to the global economy growth, we need every Nigerian to be contributing to our economy.
“How can we do that? We need to connect the unconnected, we need to provide access to people, to technology so that they can be part of it.
Inuwa who stressed the need for the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) to rebase its ICT Gross Domestic Product (GDP), argued that other sectors including health and education were already exploring the potentials and opportunities of digitisation.
“There is nothing like digital economy standing on its own, but digital is a tool that can power our economy. If you think of agriculture, healthcare, education, finance, today they all rely on digital.
“Therefore, we also even push for NBS because today, you can’t talk about finance without IT. If you remove IT from finance, the growth will decline, if you remove IT from even journalism today, it will reduce.
“So therefore, we need to rebase because digital economy is about using technology to empower whatever you do, the economic activities.”
He argued that technology was the secret behind the GDP growth as witnessed in the first, second, third and fourth revolutions
“Sometime we call it gross world products. So that means you need to look at what happened before 1700, what happened during the first, second, third industrial revolution and what can we imagine to happen during the fourth industrial revolution because we are just starting the fourth industrial revolution.
“Before 1700, global GDP has been stagnant, growth was less than 0.1% per year because no technology is used.
“That time they look at the world population and what people used to do to produce farm produce. Before then we call it aggregate revolution because it is about just feeding.
“As the world grew and we started using technology during the first industrial revolution, that started to change because it is no more about the more people that can produce more aggregate or more goods and services.
“Technology can help you to do more, that’s helped us to jump from less than 0.1% growth to almost 0.5% during this time of mechanization and textile era, during the second industrial revolution when we have electricity steel mass production, railroads etc
“That helped the world economy to grow at the average of 1.9% and we moved to the third industrial revolution when we started using computer. That’s helped the world economy to growth at an average rate of 2.8%. So today we are in the fourth industrial revolution. Fourth industrial revolution is drive by many technologies, but the most popular among it today is AI.”
Highlighting the huge potentials AI has to offer to improve productivity, the NITDA boss stressed the need to develop the mindset of Nigerians to embrace working with AI to get better results.
“That (AI) is what can help us to drive exponential growth in our economy because it is not just about the direct productivity gain. If you automate 60 or 30% of your tasks with AI, that means you have free time to do more things.
“You can use the same AI to come up with more innovative products and services, you can use AI to improve your efficiency, to do 10 times of your productivity and many more. So if you look at the feedback loop, it will help us to drive that exponential growth and achieve 20% growth in the GDP, in the global GDP.”
The NITDA boss further revealed that the Agency was partnering with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), to create a startup seed fund of $40 million for research on how Nigeria could use AI to solve her national problems.
“We support our startups with seed funding to build innovative solutions using AI. We partner with global agencies like JICA. We are partnering with them to build innovation hub in Abuja, we are partnering with them to create a startup seed fund of 40 million US dollars.
“They are bringing $20 million in grant, which is just for impact. And the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority is bringing a matching fund of $20 million. All these investment are for impact to support our startups to build innovative solution with AI and other emerging technology.”
