The Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu on Thursday in Ile-Ife, Osun State said his ministry has trained 28,800 unemployed youths from various states of the Federation on online job majoring on Micro-work and E-lancing.
He said the training was possible because the ministry is leveraging on Information Communication Technology (ICT) for rejuvenating Nigeria’s economy as well as encouraging massive online job creation through the implementation of various initiatives.
In a keynote address delivered at the opening ceremony of the Ife Youths Economic Summit (IYES 2017), Shittu said his ministry established incubation hubs in Lagos and Calabar, which are a private and public sector collaboration.
Striving to make the ICT sector, the 4th pillar of the nation’s economy in terms of contributions to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), he said the sector, which has contributed 9.58 percent to the country’s GDP, trained 1000 Girls in ICT in collaboration with Huawei Technologies and have sent 20 best amongst the girls to China in April this year for further training.
Other plans of the ministry according to the minister is to build technical and job-ready ICT skills to replace expatriate expertise with highly skilled Nigerians, increase the supply of local highly skilled talent to a fast growing sector and enhance ICT industry employment opportunities.
The minister averred that “So far, Digital Bridge Institute and other tertiary institutions are concluding an agreement with IBM (Skills Development and Research Institutes) to train 25,000 resources in 5 years (2013-2018) per institute”.
“Similarly, partnership agreement had been signed with Cisco to build Cisco Academy for highest certification (CCIE: Cisco Certified Internet working Expert) in Nigeria and with Nokia on MLab Project. The implementation of the Nokia Life programme for farmers is also at an advanced stage.
“The modules to be covered in the one month following my opening addresses have been carefully chosen; software development which is at the foundation of ICT because you need to write the instruction for the computer in a language it will understand, the study of various electronics technologies which include computer hardware& software, operating systems, web-based information and applications, telephones and other telecommunication and multimedia products, e-commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services over the internet and web enabling technologies which are products that can be used through or in conjunction with the world wide web to surf the internet.”
He told participants that youths are cardinal members of the internet ecosystem and that the ministry is strategically inclined to bringing up initiatives to cater for the interest of the nation’s youth population and working closely with various partners at national, regional and global levels to ensure massive youth employment while fast-tracking the rejuvenation of the national economy.
According to him, the theme of the summit; ‘ICT As a Formidable Tools For Nigeria’s Economic Rejuvenation and Massive Job Creation’, is apt at this time that the country is moving out of recession and all hands are on deck to ensure gradual economic growth.
