Full Name
Mr. Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, CCIE
Job Title
Director General & CEO
Company (Please input the full name of your organization)
National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA)
Speaker Bio
Mr. Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi is the Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). He is a graduate of Computer Science from the prestigious Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi. Mr. Abdullahi is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology – MIT Sloan – trained strategist with 15 years experience in IT operations, business transformation and solution architecture, across both private and public sectors. He attended Leadership and Management courses at Harvard University in the USA, University of Cambridge in the UK and IMD Business School in Switzerland.

Mr Abdullahi has worked for nine years (2004 – 2013) at Galaxy Backbone and held several positions such as Network Engineer, IP Network Field Engineer, Senior Network & Lead, IP Operations Team, and Senior Solution Architect & Lead, Technical Solution Design.

In 2014, Mr Abdullahi joined Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as a Technology Architect, where he dedicated his time to developing Technology Architecture Repository that gives 360 view of the Bank’s IT Infrastructure and facilitated ease of decision making on new IT investment. He was part of the team that executed software license rationalization that has increased cost savings for the Bank in license annual subscriptions.

As the 1st Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) in Nigeria’s Public Sector, he is also a Certified Project Manager and Solution Architect.

He also has many professional certifications in Networking, Telecommunications, Service Management and Solution Design.

Mr Abdullahi was a key resource in the development of IT standards for the apex bank, which has reduced mean time to deploy/integrate new system by over 20%. One of his major achievements as a Technology architect was the production of 7 Solution Architectures for critical IT initiatives that helped in achieving cashless society in Nigeria.

He joined NITDA in 2017 as Technical Assistant to the Director General/CEO. Being the IT regulatory body in Nigeria mandated to implement National ICT policy, he managed execution of strategy which has increased ICT contribution to Nigerian GDP by over 13% in Q2 2018. He also coordinated Local Content initiatives that has increased ICT local production by over 200% in 2017.

Mr Abdullahi is a member of both Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) and the British Computer Society (BCS).
Mr. Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, CCIE