AfDB strives to boost job creation and entrepreneurship in Nigeria

In line with its Jobs for Youth in Africa (JfYA) Strategy to boost job creation and entrepreneurship across Africa, the African Development Bank held a breakfast session at the ongoing 24th Nigerian Economic Summit themed, “Education to Employment – Mind the Gap.” The session was a joint event between the Bank, National Universities Commission (NUC), Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, Siemens, GE, MasterCard Foundation, World Bank, and Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG).

Jobs for Youth in Africa is the Bank’s initiative to create 25 million jobs and empower 50 million youth in Africa with demand-driven skills within 10 years (2016–2025). It was launched at the Bank’s Annual Meetings in May 2016 in Lusaka, Zambia with the aim of supporting African countries in scaling up responses to the youth unemployment and underemployment crisis.

The strategy responds to the transformational agenda laid out in the Bank’s Ten-Year Strategy (2013-2022), aligned with its High-5 priorities.

It is also in line with the vision of the Bank’s Human Capital Strategy (2014-2018) to ‘harness the potential of 1 billion Africans by building skills and promoting technologies to provide better jobs, ensure equal opportunities and increase workforce competitiveness.

The Bank seeks to achieve these through practical, high-impact solutions aimed at creating opportunities via education and training, transformative jobs and a business environment conducive to entrepreneurial activities. The initial flagship programs set out to implement JfYA has selected three sectors with high potential for youth inclusion: agriculture, industrialization, and ICT. Some of the flagship programs being implemented by the Bank include Coding for Employment (CfE), Rural Microenterprise Flagship Program Model, ENABLE Youth (Empowering Novel Agri-Business Led Employment) program, and Skills Enhancement Zone Flagship Program Model, among others.

Unemployment rate in the country stands at 18.8%. Among the youth (15-35 years), the figure is significantly higher as combined unemployment and underemployment rate gross 22.64 million individuals, translating to 52.65% of the entire youth labour force i.e. people who are willing and able to work. The rate of unemployment tends to be higher for people that have post-secondary school education – 31.8% unemployment rate and 50% combined unemployment and underemployment in Q3 2017. This is because graduates tend to prefer fewer in supply white-collar jobs rather than often rural, seasonal and low skilled-lower paying blue-collar jobs that are more in supply.

The signing of the MoU between the NESG and the NUC – the first of its kind in Nigeria signals a new way forward, one that entails collaboration and action on the skills development agenda.

Original source: AfDB
Published on 26 October 2018