Nigeria's First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, is significantly stepping up efforts to expand access to technology across the country. Through her pet project, the Renewed Hope Initiative, she has laid the foundation for a 10.4 million dollar startup hub in Abuja to help drive innovation among young citizens, according to PRNigeria.
The startup hub is part of an ongoing partnership between her office and the National Information Technology Development Agency to bring digital infrastructure closer to underserved populations, especially women and youths.
The initiative began setting up community ICT centres in March 2024, starting with a facility in Bauchi named after Zainab Bulkachuwa, the former President of the Court of Appeal. Since then, similar centres have opened in Ilorin, Kwara State, alongside a 50 million naira grant for female business owners, as well as in Ibadan, Oyo State, and Vandeikya in Benue State. In late October 2025, the First Lady virtually unveiled ten more digital hubs across ten states, including Lagos, Kano, and Delta.
Beyond local neighbourhoods, the push has reached tertiary institutions across Nigeria's six geopolitical zones in collaboration with the Tertiary Education Trust Fund. Each of these experience centres costs about 1 billion naira and delivers practical training in cutting-edge fields like artificial intelligence, robotics, cybersecurity, and coding.
Campuses such as Ekiti State University, the University of Cross River State, Kwara State University, and Federal Polytechnic, Oko, are already hosting these high-tech facilities to give undergraduates hands-on experience before entering the job market.
Training programmes have also run alongside the infrastructural investments. The Women ICT Training and Empowerment Programme, executed with NITDA, expanded nationwide to support over 600 women by late 2025. Additional work with tech giant Huawei has also provided female entrepreneurs with training in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and 5G technology.
