Nigeria’s Ministry of Youth and sports development is set to scale up its digital skills training to cover 500,000 youth across the country after securing funding under the covid-19 stimulus budget.
The training, under the initiative called a New DEEL (Digital Skills Acquisition, Entrepreneurship, Employability and Leadership) for the Nigerian youth, was conceived last year and was meant to begin in December 2019. It was however placed on hold due to lack of funding to fully implement its components.
States in the six geopolitical zones across the nation have been selected for the first phase of coding for Nigerian youth where each youth undergoes three months training in coding and is given a laptop to commence work upon completion of the training.
According to the Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr. Sunday Dare,
“Through the stimulus plan budget under President Muhammadu Buhari, we can now implement 65-75 per cent of DEEL concentrating on digital skills acquisition to bridge the existing gap we have in the area of technology. We had great ideas on my resumption of office but due to COVID-19 and funding challenges our vehicles for achieving the initiatives were slowed down but not stopped.”
Mr. Dare went further to say that the Ministry was able to train over 30,000 youth during the lockdown leveraging partnerships with IBM and other tech organisations in various states. The free IBM and Microsoft training in partnership with the Ministry are ongoing and accessible through the ministry’s website while a partnership with Google will soon be activated to train youth.
The training will cover digital subjects such as artificial intelligence and robotics, mobile device repairs, coding, data collection and other technologically oriented aspects.
Meanwhile, the ministry’s 60-day app challenge will this Sunday (National youth day) see a number of youth receive One million naira each, laptops and training in business development to ensure they are well equipped to start off on their own.
Mr. Dare also reiterated government’s commitment to empower Nigerian youth to make them competitive globally, expressed optimism that the approved fund for the digital skills training would provide Nigerian youth with the needed skills set and enabling environment to thrive in the post-COVID-19 era.
CBN to commence disbursement of 75bn to young people, release framework
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has disclosed businesses and activities that are eligible to benefit from the Nigeria Youth Investment Fund (NYIF), which was recently launched by the Federal Government.
The Apex Bank also pointed out the applicants that are not eligible to apply to benefit from the funds.
This was disclosed in the framework for the implementation of the Nigeria Youth Investment Fund, published by the Central Bank of Nigeria and signed by its director, development finance department.
The CBN, however, states that preference shall be given to enterprises that will support the growth of priority sectors, specifically those identified by the Economic and Recovery Growth plan (EGRP) and the Nigerian Youth Employment Action Plan.
