NITDA, Nigeria’s tech regulator, says it is now entering its most ambitious phase yet of the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme, with plans to add a new advanced AI training track called DeepTechReady. The agency shared this update on June 26 at the 15th West Africa Convergence Conference (WACC) 2026. Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, Director-General of NITDA, said the agency has already recorded a 99.6% completion rate from more than 60,000 assessments done under the 3MTT programme. He was represented at the event by Ijeoma Akande, Manager of NITDA’s South-West Zonal Office. 3MTT is one of Africa’s largest digital skills programmes. It already has a presence in all 774 local government areas in Nigeria. The goal is to train 3 million Nigerians in tech skills.
Inuwa said the programme is not just about training, it is also creating jobs. According to him, 67% of the first set of 30,000 graduates found jobs or got promoted within six months of finishing the programme.
“The programme is already changing life trajectories,” Inuwa said.
NITDA is now moving past basic digital skills. The agency is launching DeepTechReady, a new programme to train people in advanced data science and artificial intelligence (AI).
“But 3MTT is not our ceiling. It is our foundation. We are now scaling through the DeepTechReady programme, equipping a critical mass of graduates with advanced competencies in data science and artificial intelligence,” Inuwa said.
To support this, NITDA has signed a five-year partnership with the European Union (EU) to help fund and grow the programme. Inuwa said this brings “international credibility and co-funding” to take 3MTT to the next level. The next stage of 3MTT will also involve more partnerships with employers, researchers, and state governments to help more people find work after training.
Inuwa said Nigeria wants to move from being a consumer of AI to becoming a producer of AI tools. He pointed to N-ATLAS, a Nigerian-made AI language model launched in September 2025. N-ATLAS understands Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and Nigerian-accented English. It was built using more than 400 million pieces of training data. NITDA also says it is working on rules to guide how AI is used in Nigeria. Inuwa said the rules need to do two things at once: give investors confidence and still leave room for new ideas to be tested safely.
Don't Miss This Article
“Our position is that AI regulation must be dual in nature: rule-based frameworks that provide certainty for investment, and adaptive frameworks that create space for responsible experimentation,” he said.
NITDA has already published a National AI Strategy. The agency says this strategy will focus on five areas: infrastructure, talent, adoption, ethics, and governance.
NITDA wants Nigeria’s digital literacy rate to hit 70% by 2027 and 95% by 2030. The agency also wants Nigeria to be among the top 25 countries in the world for AI, robotics, blockchain, and other advanced tech. NITDA also said it expects Nigeria’s local AI market to grow to $434 million, though it did not give a clear timeline for when this would happen, so this figure should be treated as a future projection rather than a current value.
For young Nigerians looking to build a career in tech, the message from NITDA is clear: basic digital skills are no longer enough on their own. Programmes like DeepTechReady suggest that AI and data science skills could open more doors in the coming years. Anyone serious about Nigeria’s digital economy may want to start paying attention to where 3MTT goes next.
