E-Business
Kashifu Inuwa: Three Years of Changing the Fate of IT in Nigeria
By Mubarak Umar
Three years? Yes, three years as the Director General of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), and it is heartwarming to note that growing corps of well-educated, world class technocrats are coming to the public domain to help change the narrative in public service.
In these three years, Kashifu Inuwa, CCIE defines diligence, hard work and dedication. His penchant for IT growth and vision-driven initiatives to see Nigeria grow its economy through digital technologies are unprecedented. He has demonstrated the purpose of encouraging Nigerians to embrace IT and use it as an enabler for their economic activities. He believes that IT as a source of inspiration, can be harnessed to develop new business value propositions.
As the Director General of NITDA, Inuwa has proved that Nigeria can be Africa’s largest digital economy. Since ascending the leadership of NITDA in August 2019, there has been an impressive implementation of the Agency’s Strategic Roadmap for the development of Nigeria’s IT sector envisioned by Professor Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami), Honourable Minister, Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, as well as implementation of President Muhammadu Buhari’s core vision of Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) through Information Technology.
Kashifu has been steadily building upon the foundation laid by the previous occupants of that office, driving the Agency to fulfil its core mandate in consonance with the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) of the Federal Government.
To put Nigeria on a path to effectively operate a digital economy, NITDA, under the stewardship of Kashifu Inuwa mapped out a Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan (SRAP 2021-2024), identified by the Agency as the fulcrum digital economy development.
In his numerous public presentations, Inuwa has spoken extensively about the pillars captured in the SRAP, namely Developmental Regulation; Digital Literacy and Skills; Digital Transformation; Digital Innovation & Entrepreneurship; Cybersecurity; Emerging Technologies; and Promotion of Indigenous Content.
Undoubtedly, his achievements as Director General of NITDA especially in implementation of IT Regulation in the sector in the last three years are unprecedented. He walks the talks by ensuring that Nigeria maintains an automated IT Project Clearance (ITPC) and creation of user accounts for Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs), thus, saving the Nigerian Federal Government billions of naira.
It is on recorded that Kashifu continued with the visionary leadership of Prof. Pantami of facilitating the implementation of the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR), which resulted in the establishment of the Nigeria Data Protection Bureau (NDPB). This action further introduced NITDA to international stage thereby earning the Agency the position of Vice Chair of the African Union Policy and Regulatory Initiative for Digital Africa (PRIDA).
Inuwa knows the ICT global terrain deeply and he is very aware of the challenges, limitations and constraints keeping Nigeria – a nation of about 200 million people – lagging behind in the evolving world of digital economy.
Against all the odds Nigeria’s IT sector faces, the NITDA DG has shown his indefatigable vision and passion to take Nigeria into the comity of nations, running on digital economy.
Under his watch, the Agency has developed several regulatory frameworks for IT development, majority of which have been published both in hard and soft copy.
The Agency embarked on the development of two regulatory frameworks for Information Technology development in government establishments. The project is to give rise to digital skills in educational institutions and rural areas of the country. In addition, Information Technology (IT) knowledge is integrated into the underserved areas and cities so as to develop human capital and provide universal access to knowledge with the aim of creating a knowledge-based economy.
Early 2020, just few months after his appointment, the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic presented a major challenge to Nigeria and other countries across the globe, and the distinguished strategist faced the challenge by constituting a Tech4Covid Committee that explored measures to be deployed in cushioning the economic effect of the Pandemic on Nigeria’s digital enterprise.
The Committee crafted a strategy that would later ensure the retention of about 100,000 ICT jobs and the creation of additional 30,000 jobs in the Post COVID-19 era.
With the needed strategy in place, the Agency has succeeded in programming, developing and mapping out digital processes to cushion the effect of Coronavirus since it is outbreak globally; the Nigeria COVID19 Innovation Challenge, an online innovation challenge that was set up to meet the challenges our society faced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Creative minds across the country came together, experimented and built software solutions that helped address this crisis.
Furthermore, NITDA developed various digital educational contents that can be accessed remotely by thousands of Nigerians who were on lockdown, as well as strategies to assist the government in continuing its daily activities virtually.
With all the challenges posed by COVID-19, Kashifu continues to provide able leadership to NITDA in discharging its duty of regulating, coordination, monitoring, evaluation and development of the growth of the Nigerian IT sector and digital economy.
In these three years of Kashifu’s reign as Director General, the Agency uncovered unfolded the potentials in Nigerian farmers through Federal Government’s initiative of National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA), a project aimed at changing the face of the agricultural sector in the country.
The National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture is an ecosystem-driven digital platform envisioned for the transformation of the agriculture sector in Nigeria. It is designed to help farmers and other agricultural ecosystem players navigate their journey across the agriculture value chain.
This journey cuts across farm production to management, processing, harvesting, storage, marketing and consumption. Farmers were trained and empowered with digital devices and seeds funding, which also created direct and indirect jobs in the country.
NITDA also launched the National Adopted School for Smart Education (NASSE) to promote digital literacy and skills. 500 students and 30 teachers at Junior Secondary School Karshi benefited from the pilot scheme. The Agency also supervised the training of thousands of Artisans across the 6 Geo-Political Zones on digital literacy and phone repairs.
The Agency trained women on ICT and Entrepreneurship, People Living with Disabilities, each provided with Laptops (with pre-installed e-learning & graphics Software), Internet Dongles & Bag-Packs, direct jobs and indirect jobs were created; trained hundreds of Nigerians on Software, Mobile App & Web Development, and Entrepreneurship.
In addition to making an effort in IT development as well as enhancing the IT capacity of the citizenry, hundreds of IT Hubs, IT Parks, and Community ICT Centres were established, furnished and equipped with world class facilities across the states of the federation. The Agency, through its strategic relations with Tecpreneurs, supported start-ups, IT hubs and ecosystem builders through Nigeria ICT Innovation and Entrepreneurship Vision (NIIEV). In the process, NITDA’s programmes have created employment for Nigerian youths.
To ensure Nigeria’s pool of talents were not left behind, the Agency under his watch, established National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR), to drive and support research, development, and adoption of Emerging Technologies in Nigeria.
The Centre is creating the required environment for Nigeria’s teaming youths; encourage innovation and indigenisation of technologies to help address the continuous reliance on foreign products and services which has negative impact on the country’s economy. It serves as a bridge between the government, industry, and the academia in providing research environment for creativity, idea integration, collaborative environment, development of ICT policies, processes and strategies.
Kashifu commissioned Digital Fabrication Laboratory (Abuja FabLab 1.0), a unit within the Centre that serves as one of its revenue-generating components. FabLab offers training and capacity-building programmes for the Centre’s staff and external Agencies requiring such services.
While the FabLab serves all the entities within the ecosystem, it also maintains an open-door policy to the public, hence encouraging all digital innovators and makers to drive their ideas from inception to impact. It maintains an open access policy to allow the laboratory to serve as a digital innovation accelerator for all innovators and makers. It allows open-production and public access to aid innovation and entrepreneurship activities.
As a result of Kashifu’s commitment, Nigeria made history when it the Agency hosted the Key Generation and Handover Ceremony for Root Certification Authority (RCA) for Country Signing Certification Authority (CSCA) and Country Verification Certification Authority (CVCA) of the National Public Key Infrastructure (NPKI), signaling the commencement of Public Key Infrastructure Service Provision in Nigeria.
As a results of NITDA’s high productivity, performance, excellence in service delivery and impact on the nation IT sector, the Agency received the prestigious National Productivity Order of Merit (NPOM) Award from the President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR. The honour is for the Agency to do more in getting all Nigerians on board the digital journey of the Federal Government. Interestingly, NITDA is the only government Agency that was honoured with this award.
These successes, certainly, have been achieved through the efforts of this distinguished personality who against all odds, leads his organisation to greater heights. As he celebrates three years in office, I join millions of Nigerians in congratulating him for these achievements.
I also pray that the Almighty continue to guide him as he leads NITDA to greater heights and facilitates Nigeria’s transformation into a leading digital economy where citizens use digital technologies in creating wealth and prosperity.
New Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) research into the rapidly growing ransomware group known as The Gentlemen has showed that the attackers have evolved their tactics through new custom-built tools – a backdoor designed to facilitate information gathering before ransomware deployment and control over compromised systems, and a ransomware executable file.
The group has been active worldwide across industries including manufacturing, IT services, healthcare, financial services, construction, and logistics.
In its recent report Kaspersky shared an overview of ransomware trends: according to Kaspersky Security Network, in 2025 Latin America had the highest share of organisations with ransomware attacks detected (8.13%), followed by the Asia-Pacific region (7.89%), Africa (7.62%), Middle East (7.27%), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS, 5.91%) and Europe (3.82%).
The Gentlemen is a rapidly expanding Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) operation believed to have emerged around mid-2025. The Gentlemen and its affiliates primarily gain initial access to victim systems through the exploitation of Internet-facing services and compromised credentials.
The attackers may be seeking collaboration with Initial Access Brokers (IABs) to acquire access to organisations with valuable intellectual property with minimal effort. Kaspersky found that access to some victim systems, using techniques the group does not typically employ, occurred long before the ransomware infection. This may mean that the initial access was not carried out by The Gentlemen, but rather by another threat actor, possibly an IAB.
Unlike many RaaS groups, The Gentlemen demonstrates a high level of sophistication, employing custom tooling and flexible intrusion tactics. Kaspersky researchers identified a previously unknown, custom-developed backdoor written in Go deployed by the attackers one day before ransomware execution.
The implant gathers host and network information and hides its console window to avoid detection. Its capabilities include bidirectional communications with the attackers, server-controlled command execution, and reconnaissance, enabling attackers to extend and adapt their activity within a compromised environment.
Kaspersky also found a new ransomware variant written in C affecting a limited number of corporate victims. While The Gentlemen has primarily used a ransomware implant written in Go that was designed for cross-platform use, the new C-based variant appears to be Windows-focused. The group may be testing the malware in real victim environments as it expands its technical arsenal.
Notably, in their attacks the Gentlemen attempted to remove the Kaspersky security solution by utilising kavrmvr.exe (a tool designed to remove Kaspersky products). However, the Kaspersky solution remained active, and the move by the attackers was blocked and flagged as malicious.
“Despite being a relatively recent entrant to the ransomware threat landscape, The Gentlemen group is rapidly gaining a reputation among threat actors, attracting affiliates and executing high-profile attacks.
“The testing of the new C-based ransomware variants suggests that the group is actively refining its capabilities, which may translate into more stable and scalable attack chains in the near future.
“Organisations should anticipate further malicious ransomware activity and are strongly advised to prioritise vulnerability management and system hardening processes to mitigate the risk of compromise,” said Fatih Sensoy, security expert at Kaspersky GReAT.
E-Business
Kaspersky Reveals Malware Attacks on SMBs Disguised as AI Services Surged by Five Times in 2026
From January to April 2026, Kaspersky security solutions detected more than 33,300 attacks on small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), in which malicious or unwanted software for PCs were disguised as popular artificial intelligence (AI) services. This number has surged by almost five times when compared to the same period in 2025.
A new Kaspersky report reveals threat analysis and mitigation strategies to help SMBs protect themselves against the evolving threat landscape.
Kaspersky experts explored the extent to which threat actors target small and medium-sized businesses with malware disguised as legitimate AI services, considering the growing popularity of such tools for the business workflow. At the beginning of 2026 the most common lures in cyberattacks involved malware posing as ChatGPT (42%), Claude (24%), and DeepSeek (20%).
Among unique malicious files detected in the SMB sector and masqueraded as AI services, Kaspersky experts observed mainly different Trojware (Trojans and Trojan-like malware), including those capable of downloading and running other malware on compromised devices.
Trojware disguises itself as harmless files to trick users into installing them. Their functionality may vary depending on the type of the malware. It may include stealing, deleting, blocking, modifying or copying users’ data, as well as other malicious capabilities. Given this, Trojware represents a highly dangerous cyberthreat to entrepreneurs and businesses.
However, in 2026 Kaspersky telemetry detected even more attacks on SMBs, in which malicious or unwanted software for PCs were disguised as messenger apps and video conferencing software: Telegram, WhatsApp, Zoom and Microsoft Teams. From January to April Kaspersky solutions blocked almost 415,000 such attacks.
The number of attacks changed marginally compared to the previous year’s figures. Thus, Kaspersky experts note that the lure of fake communication apps remains a widespread cyberthreat.
“The threat landscape is evolving with new lures constantly appearing. For example, for the first four months of this year our solutions for small and medium-sized businesses detected hundreds of attacks, in which malicious or unwanted software were disguised as OpenClaw – an AI tool that rapidly gains popularity in 2026.
Corporate employees are increasingly using various AI services and other tools in their workflows, including those that are publicly available. Thus, to be on the safe side, SMB employees – as well as all users – should exercise caution when looking for software on the Internet. Always check the correct spelling of the website and links in suspicious emails, and use robust security solutions,” says Vasily Kolesnikov, security expert at Kaspersky.
“As adversaries constantly refine their methods to exploit human error, the need for up-to-date security awareness training for businesses of all kinds and sizes is undeniable. However, the reality is that micro-organisations often struggle to allocate time and budget to regularly update their staff on the latest threats and malicious trends.
“We believe this issue can be largely addressed through solutions tailored for small businesses which deliver robust core protection while also providing accessible security education,” adds Rodion Pyanov, product manager, Kaspersky Small Office Security.
LG Electronics has reaffirmed its commitment to advancing innovation and smart living across Africa by participating as a supporting sponsor at the Africa Technology Expo (ATE) 2026, where the company is showcasing its latest portfolio of premium consumer electronics and home appliance innovations.
The two-day expo, themed around strengthening Africa’s enterprise technology ecosystem through collaboration and innovation, has brought together industry leaders, technology innovators, multinational companies, policymakers, and entrepreneurs to explore opportunities for cross-border partnerships and digital transformation across the continent.
As one of the supporting sponsors of this year’s event, LG’s interactive exhibition booth has become a major attraction, offering visitors firsthand experience of the company’s latest AI-powered technologies designed to enhance everyday life while delivering greater comfort, convenience, energy efficiency, and connectivity.
Among the innovations on display are the latest LG QNED TV, delivering exceptional picture quality and immersive entertainment; the iconic MoodUP™️ Refrigerator, which combines intelligent cooling with customizable LED door panels; the innovative LG WashTower™️, an all-in-one premium laundry solution that maximizes space and efficiency; the energy-efficient LG ARTCOOL Air Conditioner and LG Air Tower, designed to provide smarter climate control; alongside LG’s advanced Dehumidifier and other intelligent home solutions.
Speaking on LG’s participation, Mr. H.S. ji, Managing Director, LG Electronics West Africa, said: “Africa Technology Expo provides an excellent platform to engage with innovators, businesses, and consumers who are shaping the future of technology across the continent. At LG, innovation goes beyond creating advanced products, it is about developing meaningful solutions that improve everyday life.
“Our participation reflects our commitment to supporting Africa’s digital transformation while introducing intelligent technologies that make homes and workplaces smarter, healthier, and more energy-efficient.”
The Africa Technology Expo was established to foster stronger collaboration among African businesses, emerging enterprises, and multinational organisations. During the opening ceremony, the organisers emphasized the need for deeper continental collaboration to unlock Africa’s innovation and economic potential, noting that previous editions of the expo have facilitated approximately $192 million in business deals among participating companies.
LG’s presence at the event aligns with this vision by demonstrating how cutting-edge consumer technology can support economic growth, digital inclusion, and sustainable development across Africa.
Visitors to the LG booth are participating in live product demonstrations, interactive experiences, and expert consultations, gaining valuable insights into how LG’s AI-powered ecosystem seamlessly connects home appliances and entertainment products to deliver a smarter lifestyle.
As technology continues to reshape industries and everyday living, LG remains committed to driving innovation that empowers consumers, supports enterprise growth, and contributes to Africa’s evolving digital economy.
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