President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Google will offer Nigeria a $1.5 million (N1.2 billion) grant for digital initiatives, as well as train 20,000 women and children in the skills needed to create new digital tech jobs, which the economy desperately needs.

The pledge was made by a Google West Africa delegation, led by its director, Olumide Balogun, during a meeting with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu last week.

During the meeting on Wednesday, Tinubu declared that his administration would use digital technology to achieve Nigeria's desired socioeconomic progress, which is required to transform society.

The president emphasised the importance of education and technology in uplifting Nigerians.

“Our youth make up more than 65% of Nigeria's development-seeking population. We take education very seriously because it is the most powerful weapon we have against poverty. We are dedicated to promote the digital economy and telecommunications as the future."

Tinubu said of the Google partnership that it will ‘make it a serious development in our economic programme’.

He also urged Google to collaborate with the government on data utilisation in the public sector to improve service delivery.

"We have been evaluating various database development proposals, and you have critical information that can equally help the poor leverage on data use.”

Tinubu claimed that he is inviting more young people into the administration to help drive his transformative initiatives and urged Google to 'come on board' as a frontline development partner.

The president stated that the prospective use cases emanating from the emergence of AI and quantum computing must be harnessed, even as he emphasised that development is achieved in stages.

Balogun stated in his remarks that the delegation came to Nigeria to reassure the government that the corporation is committed to assisting the government's efforts through the deployment of digital technology.