In line with its mandate to provide employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for Lagos residents, the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF) on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the United States African Development Fund (USADF) to support 15,000 youths in the state.
Through this MoU, both parties will provide an equal sum of $2 million every year for five years ($10m in total) to provide skills development and internship opportunities to 3,000 youths between the ages of 18 and 35 yearly. Women will constitute at least 50 percent of the beneficiaries.
The signing ceremony, which took place in Washington DC, United States of America, had top executives of both agencies, members of the US Congress, partners and international media present.
Speaking during the signing ceremony, Ifueko Omoigui Okauru, chairman, LSETF’s board of trustees, expressed optimism on the impact of the partnership.
“This USADF-LSETF collaboration will enable the expansion of world-class vocational training centres available in the state and the development of 15,000 skilled youths for employment into targeted sectors. It will also provide internship in cost subsidies to employers and track real-time placement of unemployed youths into jobs,” she said.
In her remarks, Teju Abisoye, acting executive secretary, LSETF, said, “With the recent Labour Force Report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showing a 6.7 percent drop in unemployment rate as well as Lagos state providing the largest number of 740,146 jobs in the third quarter of 2018, it is obvious that deliberate employment intervention policies of the Lagos State Government are finally impacting on job creation.
I am pleased to have USADF join us to create more jobs for our youths, while sustainably decreasing our alarming unemployment rate.”
C. D Glin, president/CEO of the United States African Development Foundation, stated, “We are proud to be in partnership with the LSETF, whose programmes have been independently verified to be making impact on the lives of young Nigerians.
This USADF-LSETF partnership further expands our existing commitment to investing in high impact initiatives hinged on generating income, providing financial solutions and causing a change in the African economy.”
The initiative includes training of participants and provision of internship opportunities over a period of six months and is expected to result in sustainable job and entrepreneurship opportunities.
