Oyo State has been selected among states to benefit from the Women in Agricultural Technical Education and Apprenticeship (WATEA) program, which intends to train youths and women in agriculture and provide them with apprenticeship opportunities in the private sector.
The director-general of the Oyo State Agribusiness Development Agency (OYSADA), Dr Debo Akande, disclosed this when the state governor, Seyi Makinde, received the Regional Agriculture Counsellor, Benin Republic, Cameroon, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria and Togo, Dr Sonia Darracq and the Head of Capacity Development Office, WATEA Coordinator, Mrs Zaina Sore, in Ibadan.
The programme’s objective is to train at least 2,500 youths in which 80 per cent will be women and a part of the beneficiaries will come from the schools in Oyo State.
According to Akande, the French government has offered to support the state government in addressing the skills and competencies gap in agribusiness.
He added that the WATEA team had been working with the Oyo State College of Agricultural Technology (OYSCATECH), Igboora, noting that the institution’s curriculum is being revamped, while its teachers and students will also be supported.
He said: “Oyo State has a long standing relationship with the French Government, especially in the area of agriculture and health as well as education. And this is one of such collaborations that we are having.
“Oyo State has been selected as one of the most strategic places for the project, which focuses strongly on apprenticeship in Agribusiness where young people will be trained and become apprentices in the private institutions.
“We all know the gap existing in agribusiness; the deficit in terms of skills and competencies. And what the French government is doing is to support us to provide that now at this particular point in time.
“They are working strongly with OYSCATECH. Now, we are revamping our curriculum and supporting the teachers within the schools and supporting the students as well.
“We are aiming that the outcome of this programme would have very strong, skilled, young people that can become entrepreneurs and can support the constant increase we are seeing in the agribusiness where we have a lot of private sectors that are coming.
“The state is committed to this project and they can bear witness to that based on everything this Team has requested from the Governor, which has been approved.’’
