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The Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mallam Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has advised the country’s youths to work closely with the government and other stakeholders in order to acquire digital skills that will empower them in a post COVID-19 Nigeria.
Abdullahi spoke during an online interactive session with Nigerian youths on the topic: ‘Education, Employment & Technology in Nigeria: Gaps & Opportunities Post COVID-19 Pandemic’, organised by Global Shapers Community, a non-governmental organization.
The time to hold-on to only educational qualifications without prerequisite skills is gone especially now that the world has changed in different dimensions, said the NITDA’s boss while stressing the need for digital skills that empower young people to be able to leverage 21st century opportunities.
The novel Coronavirus has led to unprecedented disruptions to global economy, and virtually crumbled Nigeria’s economic mainstay: crude oil export. No sectors have been unaffected with global financial markets tottering, massive loss of jobs all over the world, teaming unemployed youths, lockdown of schools and learning centres, and closure of businesses among others.
“As of March 28, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic is causing more than 1.6 billion children and youth to be out of school in 161 countries. This is close to 80% of the world’s enrolled students,” said Abdullahi.
“Prior to COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment rate was 23.1% in 2019 according to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), though some predicted it could reach 33% by 2020. Youth unemployment and underemployment is 55.4%. With the onset of the pandemic, the statistics cannot be better,” he added.
Pandemic brings a vista of opportunities
But the pandemic has also brought a vista of opportunities that young people can leverage on with the right digital skills, the NITDA’s boss stressed.
His words: “To overcome these challenges of illiteracy and unemployment amongst the population of teaming youth, there is a need for careful planning to harness the opportunities the pandemic presented by using technology for human capital development and employment for next generation to curb the impact of the pandemic.”
According to Abdullahi, in response to the long closure of schools due toCOVID-19, NITDA under the supervision of Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy launched its Virtual Academy for those staying at home to use their time meaningfully for learning some skills.
“When we looked at the situation, we decided to come up with NITDA Academy for Research and Development (NART). We have 47 different technology related courses and so far 18,000 students have started taking lessons. This is part of our commitment in creating opportunities to deal with the challenges.”
“Furthermore, we launched an innovative challenge for Nigerians to come up with workable solutions to mitigate the impact of the pandemic. We got close to 2000 applicants with lots of interesting ideas from different parts of the country,” added Abdullahi.
NITDA’s blueprint for digital skills development
He shared NITDA’s blueprint for digital skills development and engagement of young people.
His words: “There is likely a boom in response to the aftermath of COVID-19. Areas to watch out for are ICT for mass literacy, healthcare, agriculture, women empowerment, security and surveillance. Others are job opportunities for content production, animation design for learning, drones for medical supply deliveries, robotics in surgeries and telemedicine and sensors for proximity monitoring. All these can only be achieved if the youths leverage on digital skills rather than qualifications only.”
“At NITDA, we are building skills acquisition centres across the country to bridge the digital gap. Because we identified the need for escalating our activities to rural areas, this falls under our Digital Inclusion programme.”
“To succeed, we need to improve our technology innovation to defeating the pandemic and turning it to a thing of blessing in disguise. Whether we like it or not, there is certainly a new normal in post COVID-19 pandemic where digital technologies are playing a major role.”
