The Federal Government is partnering with the German Cooperation Deutsche Zusammenarbeit on Student Entrepreneurship Activity Hub (SEA-Hub) to promote entrepreneurial education among secondary school students in Nigeria.
Markus Wauschkuhn, head, of the SEDIN-GIZ programme, who spoke at the 2nd national SEA-Hub exhibition & competition, said the programme was aimed at providing a platform to harness and turn the growing unemployed youth population in Nigerian into an asset.
According to Wauschkuhn, studies on the future of work suggest that many traditional jobs will not survive in the years to come. He added that many companies were expected to progressively look to more innovative and creative options offered by entrepreneurial endeavours.
“Lack of employment represents a serious challenge for the Nigerian economy and society.
“About 44 percent of the working age population are either unemployed, underemployed or have retracted from the labour market. For young people, it is difficult to find full and productive employment and decent work.
“To harness and turn the growing youth unemployed population in the country into an asset, we need an urgent focus on the economic activities that can thrive and yield demographic dividends for the nation.”
States covered by the SEA-Hub programme include Edo, Delta, Imo, Kaduna, Lagos, Niger, Ogun, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Yobe and the FCT.
“Some of the SEA-Hub graduates have gone further to create over 600 local jobs. The German government’s commitment to the economic development of Nigeria serves as a catalyst for several initiatives and programmes and one of such is the SEA-Hub initiative,” said Wauschkuhn.
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Speaking also, Adamu Adamu, Nigeria’s minister of education, said the initiative was borne out of the belief that entrepreneurship is the single most critical ingredient for economic empowerment and job creation.
Represented by Kehinde Osinaike, deputy director, vocational education, ministry of education, Adamu said: “The laudable initiative is aimed at encouraging the teeming youth to showcase their entrepreneurship creativity, innovativeness, risk-taking, self-discipline, proactive and perseverance that will make them self-reliant job and wealth creators and confident about the future.
“Entrepreneurship is an antidote to youth unemployment. The truth is that the challenge of unemployment cannot be solved by the government alone. Hence we need to collaborate with relevant stakeholders such as GIZ for the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG5).
“This programme is in line with the National Policy on Science and Technology Education and Ministerial Strategic Plan.”
In her remarks, the Economic Education and Entrepreneurship Component lead (SEDIN), Oladoyin Olawaiye, noted that over 700 teachers had been impacted directly and indirectly.
According to her, SEA-Hub, an initiative of the programme pro-poor growth and promotion of employment-SEDIN, has been introduced as co-curricular entrepreneurship clubs in secondary school to provide practical entrepreneurship training to teachers and students from over 340 secondary schools across 11 states and FCT.
Meiran Community School, Lagos, was declared winner of the 2022 SEA-Hub state competition as 15 secondary schools compete for the most outstanding school of the year.
