Gov. Umaru Bago of Niger has been honoured with the Digital Governor of the Year in the category of digital literacy at the Nigeria GOVTECH conference and awards 2024.
The award, organised by the Bureau of Public Service Reforms, recognised Bago’s efforts in promoting digital literacy and leveraging technology to enhance governance and service delivery in the state.
Bago, represented by his deputy, Mr Yakubu Garba, congratulated fellow recipients and thanked the organisers, sponsors, and development partners for their support.
He expressed gratitude for the award and pledged to continue promoting technology adoption across all sectors to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
Some notable achievements of the administration in digital literacy include: training market traders and artisans on technology use in Hausa and pidgin english.
Others were training children aged 10-18 years in robotics, Internet of Things, and programming, as well as collaboration with Tech4dev to train civil servants in IT skills.
They also include collaboration with the Nigerian Export Promotion Council to train Small and Medium Enterprise on eCommerce to boost exports, organising training programmes for women under the “TechSis” initiative.
Other areas were training commissioners, permanent secretaries, and special advisers for better service delivery using IT, training journalists in open-source Intelligence to reduce spread of fake news, and digitalisation of the civil service recruitment process.
Bago disclosed that the state had established the Ministry for Communication Technology and Digital Economy and an agency for green initiatives, the first of its kind at the sub-national level.
