Nigeria’s Minister for Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, announced the Federal Government has secured a $500 million loan to boost innovation and entrepreneurship in the country’s digital sector.

Speaking at a dinner organized by the Ministry of Communications and the World Bank, Tijani said the funding will be domiciled locally in partnership with the Bank of Industry (BoI) to ensure it benefits genuine Nigerian businesses.

“We want to foster the growth of homegrown enterprises to contribute to Nigeria’s economic progress,” Tijani stated, adding that the $500 million is just the beginning, with plans to bring more investors on board.

The minister also stressed the goal is to leverage the fund to attract additional investment and expand resources available to local innovators and entrepreneurs.

Meanwhile, the World Bank Country Director Shubham Chaudhuri reaffirmed their commitment to creating jobs and opportunities for Nigerian youth through digital technologies. He also affirms the effort of the World Bank to collaborate with the government on a digital national ID system, targeting 148 million Nigerians of working age by mid-2023.

Our main mission here in Nigeria is to eliminate poverty, make lives better, create jobs for all Nigerian youth. One of the areas that we think has the greatest potential is the area of using digital technologies to transform. Now to do that it begins with having this digital national ID.

“So one of the main partnerships we have is working with NIMC to ensure the rollout of the registration so that all 213/220million Nigerians have a digital national ID, beginning of course with all people of working age and I think the target for that is at least 148 million people by the middle of next year. He said