Nigeria records 2.77m digital literacy trainees against 50m target
- NITDA says 2.77 million training achievements are logged on a new national dashboard, about 5.5% of the 50 million goal for 2027.
- Private companies reported most of the training, while women made up 32.9% of beneficiaries.
- Officials say counting trainees is not enough and want to measure whether skills are actually used.
Nigeria has logged 2.77 million digital literacy training achievements so far, far below the 50 million people the government hopes to reach by 2027, according to the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
The agency announced the figure on Tuesday in Abuja at the 2026 DL4ALL National Digital Literacy Workshop, where it also unveiled a national dashboard for tracking training programmes. The recorded number works out to about 5.5% of the target.
NITDA Director-General Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi said the dashboard shows training reported across all 774 local government areas and 14,664 communities. The country is aiming for 70% digital literacy by 2027 and 95% by 2030.
Who is doing the training
Private companies reported the largest share of the training. Of the organisations on the platform, 151 are businesses, about 60%, while government institutions and non-governmental organisations make up smaller portions.
Cisco tops the list of contributors with 1,073,604 reported training achievements, followed by NITDA with 960,424 and Meta Platforms with 333,816. Others include Imo Digital City Limited, the Sokoto State Ministry of Innovation and Digital Economy, and a state bureau for information and communications technology.
The dashboard also shows gaps in reach. Women account for 32.9% of recorded beneficiaries, below the 50% balance Abdullahi said the programme should aim for. It records 17,156 beneficiaries with disabilities and 65,767 rural beneficiaries.
Abdullahi said the government cannot hit its targets alone and needs businesses, state governments, schools and civil society to take part. He said the goal is not to make every Nigerian an IT professional but to make everyone digitally capable, so people can use technology to improve their work.
Lailah Sanusi, research lead at Digitalcore Nigeria Limited, said the dashboard showed 2.7 million beneficiaries as of 16 October, up from about 707,000 at the start of the year. She asked whether the rise reflected more training or simply more reporting, and urged organisations to submit their data.
She said people under 35 make up 75% of beneficiaries, while persons with disabilities are 0.62%.
What happens next
NITDA said the dashboard will help identify communities that have received little training and direct resources to them. The agency is also working with the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to train people in markets and communities, a programme it says has produced more than 20,000 trainers and over 803,000 trainees.
Officials stressed that the number of people trained is not the only measure of success. Adetunji Adeyemo, acting permanent secretary of the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, said progress should be judged by whether Nigerians use the skills to improve productivity and access digital services.