The National Information Technology Development Agency has urged Nigeria’s regulatory agencies to collaborate in establishing a national regulatory sandbox to provide a coordinated framework for testing emerging technologies while maintaining effective regulatory oversight.

NITDA Director-General, Kashifu Inuwa, said stronger cooperation among regulators would be essential to the successful implementation of the National Regulatory Sandbox and to creating an environment where innovators can develop and test new technologies under appropriate supervision.

Inuwa, who spoke through the National Coordinator of the Office for Nigerian Digital Innovation, Victoria Fabunmi, made the remarks at the National Regulatory Sandbox Governance and Implementation Planning Workshop in Abuja.

The workshop marks the transition from the design phase of the initiative to implementation, with participating regulators expected to review and validate the proposed governance structure ahead of the sandbox’s rollout.

According to Inuwa, the Office for Nigerian Digital Innovation has spent several months laying the groundwork through stakeholder consultations, ecosystem mapping, regulatory assessments and the development of a draft governance and implementation framework.

“The work completed so far provides a solid foundation, but the National Regulatory Sandbox can only achieve its objectives through collective ownership by all relevant regulatory institutions,” he said.

The proposed sandbox is designed to provide innovators with a structured environment to test emerging technologies in collaboration with regulators, while enabling authorities to identify potential risks and assess how existing regulations should apply to new business models.

Inuwa said the Technical Working Group was established to pool the expertise, experience and statutory mandates of participating institutions to develop a regulatory model tailored to Nigeria’s rapidly evolving innovation landscape.

He urged regulators to regard their respective statutory responsibilities as complementary rather than competing interests, stressing that greater coordination would help establish a framework capable of addressing emerging technologies while safeguarding regulatory integrity and public trust.

The initiative is poised to become far more critical for Nigeria’s tech ecosystem as startups move beyond fintech into heavily regulated fields like healthcare, mobility, and agriculture—where oversight is fragmented across numerous government bodies.