Nigeria’s digital inclusion drive recorded another milestone as the national IT regulator announced that its collaboration with the Renewed Hope Initiative has already produced more than one million digitally trained citizens, including 320 women who completed the latest round of the Women ICT Training Empowerment Programme. The closing ceremony for the 2024 cohort took place at the Presidential Villa, where the initiative’s national leadership commended the graduates and urged them to begin applying their skills, regardless of how small their first steps may be.
The programme is designed to widen access to digital opportunities and position more Nigerians to participate in the country’s expanding technology economy. According to the IT regulator, the training directly supports the national agenda on economic diversification, human capital development, and inclusive growth. The agency explained that digital progress relies on skilled people, leading to the creation of the National Digital Literacy Framework with targets of 95 per cent digital literacy by 2030 and a mid-term goal of 70 per cent by 2027.
The Women ICT Training Empowerment Programme has grown steadily over the past three years. Thirty-five women were trained in 2023, 252 in 2024, and 320 in 2025, bringing the total female beneficiaries to more than 600. Overall, more than 1,000,143 Nigerians, including 32,000 civil servants, have received training in digital literacy and related skills under the current administration. This rapid scale-up reflects an effort to build a workforce capable of supporting innovation, entrepreneurship, and technology-driven economic activity across the country.
The graduates were encouraged to return to their communities, put their training into practice, and mentor at least two or three other women to ensure that digital knowledge spreads beyond the programme’s immediate beneficiaries. The people who participated described the training as transformative, saying it provided practical competence and renewed confidence to compete in Nigeria’s digital economy. For small businesses, especially women-led enterprises, the growing pool of digitally skilled individuals offers stronger prospects for innovation, online
