Nigerian startups which raised over $1billion in funding for 2021 show a youth potential that can be harnessed and thus there is a need to have the right opportunity in place to harness it, according to Jean Bakole, regional director and representative to West Africa, The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).
Bakole made this known at the ongoing 2022 Nigeria Employers’’ Summit hosted by the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) in Abuja, with the theme, ‘The Private Sector – An Engine of National Development’.
The aim of the summit is to promote and deepen a collaborative and development focused engagement between employers and government for the creation of decent work, employment generation and other social economic imperatives that the nation desperately needs.
More so, the private sector is expected to pool about 90 percent of the 2021-2025 National Development Plan’s total spending of N3.5 trillion while setting the stage for lifting 100 million people out of poverty in 10 years.
“To create incentives that will make the private sector to be the engine of growth, there is a need to focus on human capital because providing the necessary skills and acquisitions through young girls or boys, is the only way to move ahead,” Bakole said.
He also added that startups worldwide have become extremely important and so we need to adopt the startup policies.
“We can see the ideas that young people have but how are they translating those ideas into bankable projects because ideas means business. For example, young people worldwide are drilling up ideas and revenue for their countries. So we have to stop and think about what we should do for our young people.”
Employment is one of the most important economic indicators used to measure the health and performance of any economy.
Read also: No respite as Nigerians battle unemployment
But in Africa’s biggest economy, high unemployment rate has adversely affected the disposable income of families which has eroded their purchasing power especially for the youth (15-34).
Compared to other age groups, unemployment is highly felt amongst those within its younger population aged 15-34, which comprises over 65 percent of its more than 200 million people.
Data from National Bureau of Statistic (NBS) shows that the number of unemployed young persons increased by 220 percent to 12.8 million in Q4 2020 from 4.0 million in Q2 2015.
The consequence of this has left a number of them to become desperate by turning to illegitimate ways to survive ranging from armed robbery, banditry and kidnapping, which has made it difficult for the government to attract the investment needed for job creation.
While others who don’t want to result in social vices are seeking opportunities to travel abroad, fuelling massive brain drain that is hurting the labour quality in Nigeria.
On his part Joseph Ari, the director-general of Industrial Training Fund (ITF) complained about how federal agencies are very lazy in training the youth in terms of skills.
“A country as high as Nigeria is not a member of the world skill competition, something is wrong because we need to tap with others in order to grow. So when we do this, we will get it right, slowly but we will get it there,” Ari said.
The chief executive also highlighted that the ITF from September 2016 to September 2020 has trained over 500,000 Nigerian youths and the Vulnerable.
“More than 80 percent of youths trained in technical skills development programs have either become gradually employed, self employed or employees.”
“There is no doubt that skills development is critical when we are trying to curb youth unemployment in our dear nation.
Entrepreneurs or startups are important to market economies because they can act as the wheels of the economic growth of the country. By creating new products and services, they stimulate new employment, which ultimately results in the acceleration of economic development.
And the COVID-19 pandemic, which could result in widespread disappointment and frustration without appropriate policies, has forced the youth to have the desire to set up a business.
According to a 2021 survey, the impact of the pandemic on the labour market is making a trader or businessperson to be the most common dream job of Nigerian youths as against high-profile white-collar Jobs
“When asked what their dream job is, the most commonly reported was trader or businessperson (22 percent), more popular among female than male respondents.
Other common dream jobs reported were doctor (17 percent), engineer (8 percent), and tailor (7 percent).
On order to scale the youth for skills empowerment, Tayo Olosunde, co-founder and executive directors at MindtheGapNg advocates that the private sector should make a commitment to work with National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to work with a certain number of corpers so that they can empower them to have the right mindset.
“The NYSC is arguably the most credible platform for this because 360,000 every year is a high number that we can harness and deploy to help the rest of the 36 million,” Olosunde said.
He adds, “360,000 is about 10 percent of the total youth population. We should not be pushing the bulk to the stakeholders but also to the youth themselves.”
