Equipping young people with digital skills is one of the solutions for youth unemployment globally. This is even as growing mobile applications firms are moving towards ‘online work’ suggesting that digital skills will become crucial to youth employability.
However, as part of efforts to halt unemployment trends amongst youths and make them more productive and employable the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development is currently training over 100 young Nigerians in coding, graphics, digital marketing, and web designing under the NPower Tech programme.
According to UNESCO digital skills are a range of abilities to use digital devices, communication applications, and networks to access and manage information. They give people access to create and share digital content, communicate and collaborate, and solve problems for effective and creative self-fulfillment in life, learning, work, and social activities at large.
Digital skills are also included in the European Commission’s recommendation on “Key Competencies for Lifelong Learning”, which identifies eight key competencies among knowledge, employability, social inclusion, active citizenship, healthy and sustainable lifestyle. According to the European Digital Skills Survey, more than 90 per cent of jobs require digital skills that go far beyond traditional office work.
Hence training plays an important role in youth’s digital skills education. In fact, the COVID-19 crisis provided opportunities for digitalisation of education, which was also a big challenge for teachers, students, and their parents. Lack of digital skills affected not only the quality of remote education but also communication between school and students, as well as access to information and computer platforms.
As part of efforts to bridge the skill gap, the N-Power Programme was built to address the issue of youth unemployment and help increase social development. The Programme is designed to target Nigerians between the ages of 18 and 35 “to acquire and develop life-long skills for becoming change-makers in their communities.”
The N-Power Programme is a community-sourced solution to the nation’s under-developed public services like education, healthcare, and civic engagement.
Precisely, the purpose of the Npower Tech Software programme was to train and empower 10,000 software developers in the ICT Industry.
The high point of the training is to link trainees with placement opportunities within their respective localities.
Speaking with LEADERSHIP Weekend the project manager, N-Power Software Programme, Temitope Folorunsho, said the programme will establish the foundation of knowledge, platform, and tools upon which trainees can pursue a career as software development entrepreneurs.
Folorusho said the N-Power Software training works to educate and empower young people from disadvantaged communities using ICT.
He said the targets are the youth who reside in informal settlements as these areas are the most populated and have the highest rate of unemployment.
He said often young people who live in these areas have limited educational and economic opportunities; the goal, therefore, is to equip them with skills that would enable them to productively contribute to the country’s economy while positively impacting their lives.
He said, “Basically, the software training focuses mainly on web development, graphic design, and basic IT skills. And we were mobilised since December 2022. The students resumed officially on the 10th of February, 2023.
“They were given one week to resume. So we commenced the training officially on the 17th February, we have started the training proper and so far has been very well.
“We have received the delivery of their laptops and we will be handing them over to the trainees officially and also connect them to the internet so that they will train better.”
He said he always counsels the students on the need to shift their mindset to attain their goals.
Folorunsho said developing these skills will allow them to feel more confident in using emerging technology and will make them faster in finishing tasks in their respective organisations.
For example, he said having IT skills will enable them to save money and time as they will be able to solve technical issues independently.
“In my teaching, I have tried to discourage the motives of just coming to get a laptop. Because the lifespan of most laptops is just four years to five years.
“But the knowledge they will gain from here will stick with them forever in their lifetime. And it can be used to get good and decent jobs that will be beneficial to them, their career, and family globally.
“I think what I expect from them is that after this, they should build on it and be a better version of themselves. So that when I see them tomorrow, I’m not seeing them at this level but at a higher level because IT rules the world presently, even in the oil and gas sector needs IT experts.”
He said the trainees were selected across the north-central and camped to train in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja.
He also lauded the federal government for ensuring that they were accommodated in a decent environment to learn.
On his part, training head, and lead facilitator, NPower Software Training, Stephen Ojo said the training is of utmost importance in this current age and time because they have been taught software development.
He said globally, software development is among the top five high-demand careers in ICT generally.
Ojo said companies realize the importance of having a skilled workforce, hence if they want to get and stay ahead of the competition and improve their productivity, they need to attract tech-savvy employees.
Quoting the popular old proverb: “Give a person a fish and feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime.” He said he is optimistic that the trainees will be able to compete globally after their twelve weeks training.
He said they have been responding and performing excellently in their presentation, during interactive sessions and research.
A trainee, Blessing Christopher Ekuebaga from Nasarawa State said so far the training is going well and she is enjoying every bit of the lectures.
“I’m happy because the training is going as planned. Our facilitators are doing an excellent job and I’ve learnt a lot so far.
“I’ve learnt some code, like from HTML, CSS, and even WordPress,” she said.
She lauded the federal government’s efforts so far in ensuring that the training goes as planned.
Another training from Benue State, Akighir Aondohemba Joseph noted that from the recent statistics, tech jobs are in high demand.
“My message to the federal government is to ensure that this kind of programme continues so that other Nigerians can benefit from it. And the target audience should be people like me, people who are based on the outskirts of Nigeria.
“Basically, with little understanding of tech people living in the states would benefit from the programme because business owners living in rural areas would have websites, as many of them don’t have one even though their businesses require it.
“So with my knowledge, especially in using WordPress, I feel I can now build a website at affordable prices for them and their businesses.
“So I’m encouraging the federal government to continue this training,” he added.
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