The Federal Government has said that it would train at least 300 youths every six months across three geopolitical zones of North West, South East and South West on export high in-demand digital skills as advised by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
The outgoing Executive Director (ED)/CEO Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) and President ECOWAS TPO Network, Mr. Olusegun Awolowo said this on Friday in Abuja at his last day official press briefing.
The event was an update on the progress in respect to three innovation hubs and collaboration with NITDA under the Export Expansion Facility Programme (EEFP) to drive the export of digital services
Awolowo said that the training among others is to take advantage of the Services Export market and make Nigeria a premium destination for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).
“In recognition of the huge opportunity for Nigeria to take advantage of the export of services $4.7trn a year market, a working group was set up under the EEFP in partnership with the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), to design and implement initiatives that will grow the Nigeria services export sector. The purpose of this meeting is to review and consolidate on the achievements of the partnership.
“Some of the achievements include the Outsource Nigeria Initiative, financial interventions for six start-ups, support to three innovation hubs, setting up of skills acceleration centers and advocacy support for the Nigerian Start-up Bill,” he said.
The former NEPC CEO said that the Outsource Nigeria initiative was birthed from the WEF Future of Jobs Report.
According to the WEF, at least 97m new jobs will be created globally between now and 2025, out of which about 80 percent will be outsourced.
Awolowo said Nigeria’s large youthful population positions the country to take full advantage of this opportunity.
He said, “Every cohort of trained youths will potentially earn $9m per year for the country. This, we believe will increase the global competitiveness of our labor force, reduce youth unemployment and earn more foreign exchange for the country.
“The Outsource Nigeria initiative is being implemented through a strategic partnership between the government, academia and industry. Its pilot is a partnership with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Centres of Excellence in three institutions of University of Nigeria, Nsukka; Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) and the University of Ibadan (UI) with funding support from the CBN Creative Industry Financing Initiative.”
He said that Nigeria will be included in the WEF Future of Jobs Report due to be published in 2022.
“This we believe will help in mapping the skills available in Nigeria and compare with similar data collected from other countries, thereby giving a better sense of where Nigeria has an advantage in exporting services. We are confident that this will be a good stepping-stone to build a modern labor market information system in the country as part of the Closing the Skills Gap Accelerator.
“The team at WEF were also particular about providing support for the Nigerian Startup Bill and providing their platform for Nigeria to leverage their EduTech partners, to scale up skills acquisition from hundred to tens of thousands of youths through the digital economy infrastructure to be deployed in the universities earlier mentioned.
“We are providing about N150m grant support to innovation hubs across three geo-political zones in Nigeria and about N300m in grants to support start-ups that are exporting and have the potential to export services in the EntertainmentTech, FinTech, EduTech and LogisticsTech sectors,” he said.
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