• Friday, March 29, 2024
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The 26th Nigerian Economic Summit: Making Youth a Priority

NES#26

The Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) and the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning are pleased to announce that the rescheduled 26th Nigerian Economic Summit (NES#26) will now hold on November 23rd – 24th 2020. The Summit with the theme “Building Partnerships for Resilience”, will convene national and global policymakers, business leaders, development partners and scholars to lead and participate in sessions that will focus on strategic partnerships between the youth, governments, private sector and the civil society to build resilience for Nigeria’s households, businesses and economy.

The NESG realizes the need to have the voice of the youth heard and as such, the 26th Nigerian Economic Summit will provide all participants with a robust engagement platform and an opportunity to deliberate on topical issues especially those related to recent developments; and in particular the need to amplify the voice of our youth and the issues they have raised in the past few weeks.

It has become apparent that the level of investments in the youth will determine the pace of economic growth, development, and security of the nation. Governments at all levels, especially the sub-nationals and all stakeholders need to refocus youth development programmes from mere prescriptive employment drives to improve the wealth creation capabilities of the youth and find ways to ensure that empowerment policies and programmes adopt a broader and more holistic framework.

As a result, a number of sessions and design workshops at the 26th Nigerian Economic Summit will focus on the youth and how their potentials can be harnessed for economic growth and development while highlighting the role of Nigeria’s sub-nationals as frontiers for national development. Some of the youth sessions at NES#26 include Unlocking the Productive Potential of Nigerian Youth, Empowering Nigeria’s youth, Our Youth Bulge – Risk or opportunity and Rethinking Sub-National Competitiveness amongst others. Some of the speakers at the sessions will include the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Rt. Hon. Patricia Scotland QC who is scheduled to deliver a special address, Chairman of First Bank Nigeria, Mrs. Ibukun Awosika and CEO of Connected Development, Mr. Hamzat Lawal amongst others.

Furthermore, some of the panellists that will be speaking at the “Opening Plenary: Nigeria’s Turning Point” include Dr. Kayode Fayemi; Governor of Ekiti State, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal; Governor of Sokoto State and Ms. Funke Opeke; CEO, MainOne. Other speakers include Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chair GAVI and the former Prime Minister of Australia, Ms. Julia Gillard who will be speaking at an all-female plenary session “Women in Leadership: Towards the Global goals.”

Discussions at NES#26 will be anchored on three pillars – Collaboration, Execution and Impact that will be dimensioned across five sub-themes: Mapping the Future; New Trends, New Opportunities, New Horizons; Embracing Technology and Innovation; Building Resilience and Charting the Path to Recovery.

The 26th Nigerian Economic Summit is expected to be a ‘Big Conversation for Action’ that combines in-person and virtual dialogues for stakeholders across the civil society, public and private sector to reflect on the state of the Nigerian economy and rethink the country’s economic fundamentals.
For more information on registration, go to www.nesgroup.org/26