The Challenge

Science, Technology and Innovation have become key factors contributing to economic growth in both advanced and developing economies. ICT sector plays an important role, notably by contributing to rapid technological progress and productivity growth. It is now clear that ICT now renders international boundaries irrelevant whereby several modern activities transcend international boundaries, which, connotes that we live in a boundless world that is becoming a smaller place.

As the world continues to witness evident changes in technology-driven work and employment, over 50% of Nigeria’s population lack digital skills- according to 2021 World Bank Development report.
The capabilities and skills required to use various forms of digital technologies remain limited to a small segment of the population, while the vision to bridge gap between development and application of emerging technologies in Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) and industries is still a challenge.

Furthermore, despite its large, youthful, and entrepreneurial population, digital entrepreneurship is yet to be fully exploited given its potential to become an engine of economic transformation in Nigeria.

Consequently, the proposed TETFund Centre of Excellence in Digital Literacy and Emerging Technology (TCoEx-DILET) is to explicitly and pragmatically address the core issues involved in the development of digital skills of Nigeria’s population and in parallel, providing motivational vehicles to bridge the knowledge gap between development and application of emerging technologies in MDAs which will act as a catalyst for diffusion of innovation into the targeted MDAs.

Our Goal.

The overall goal of the proposed Centre is to train high quality manpower equipped with digital skills from diverse backgrounds, who will recognize, understand, and readily exploit the immense potentials of emerging modern global technology frontiers to innovate creative solutions to existing and emerging challenges including climate change, youth unemployment and sustainable development.

Our Specific Objectives.

1. To aspire to stimulate creativity and excellence in digital research and innovation, and expand digital learning opportunities for OAU staff, students and other researchers and users from the other zones and wider diverse backgrounds.
2. To focus on practice-anchored digital education that will produce a critical mass of future teachers/instructors for the new vision, as well as a new crop of leaders with digital skills to drive the vision of the Federal Government of Nigeria, in addition to developing the next generation of scientists, researchers, teachers, entrepreneurs, and product developers, and enrolling new postgraduate students from the six geo-political zones in Nigeria.
3. To apply and strengthen ICT-mediated design methodologies emerging from application contexts such as IoT, autonomous systems/machine intelligence, and Industry 4.0, to suit and accelerate the advanced skills development in the geo-political zones, as well as deepen industry-mediated collaborative research in the area of emerging technology;

4. To expand learning and research opportunities for postgraduate studies in all the key sectors consistent with the SDGs, especially SDG 13 on climate action, by deploying existing and new advances in AI and ICT, for which OAU has a leading edge in the sub-region; and
5. To leverage the cognate intellectual infrastructure and the output of the university and collaborating partners to serve as the launch pad for start-up digital companies borne out of university research, discovery and innovation activities, by partnering firms and emerging techpreneurs.