Abuja moots training with the help of major stakeholders
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Abuja has sought input from tech stakeholders to train one million software developers by the end of 2023 to bridge the skills gap in the economy in which the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) says 15.7 per cent of jobs lie fallow for lack of skills.
Communications and Digital Economy Minister Isa Pantami said the support of major players across economic sectors is needed because the government alone cannot handle the training.
He made the plea in his keynote address at a virtual workshop organised by the Nigeria Software Testing Qualification Board (NGSTQB) with the theme, “Role of Software Testing in Nigeria’s Digital Economy”.
In his view, training and certifying more Nigerians as software testers have become imperative with the increasing integration of software into every sphere of human life and the need for a secure system.
“We want to see how we can license some of you to provide these services, that means if I develop software, I need to come to a certified tester to make sure I meet the standard quality assurance; all the basic bug-free, and the vulnerability assessment before I am able to sell that software,” Pantami said.
“This will eliminate having the market loaded with software with a lot of vulnerabilities.
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Requesting help from multinationals
“We are working on building the capacity of 1 million developers in the next 18 months and we know we cannot do it alone, that is why we need people like you to help us achieve this,” Pantami added, per reporting Nairametrics.
“We are already working with some multinationals to help us on this and we also need the indigenous people to key into this initiative and we also need as many testers as developers.”
NGSTQB President Boye Dare said the board seeks to make Nigeria the software testing hub for the outsourcing software testing market in Africa.