Nigerian Government, W’Bank To Spend $10m On Youth Empowerment

The World Bank in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Education is set to spend 10 million dollars as grants for Nigerian youths to acquire specialized skills to enhance employment in the country.

Education Specialist of the World Bank Dr Mistura Rufai disclosed this at a two-day workshop held in Abuja, Nigeria’s Capital for the grantees of the Innovation Grant Facility.

The workshop which also witnessed the signing of a Contract /Memorandum of Understanding, (MOU), was organised by the National Project Coordinating Unit,
NCPU, of the Innovation Development and Effectiveness in the Acquisition of Skills, IDEAS, project of the Federal Ministry of Education.

Economic fortunes

Rufai said there was the need for youths to be trained and empowered to build economic fortunes of the country, as such the facility was designed to support complementing agencies that are promoting innovations in the training of digital skills.

She said the current scheme has about 78 grantees to empower over 50,000 youths within a year across the country, stressing that the scheme will enhance their Employability in organizations or when they chose to be self employed.

“It aims at supporting critical intervention projects in the skills development ecosystem such that we develop digital skills across the country.

“The training is expected to have beginners, intermediate to advanced level. As we speak at the national level, we have about 10,000 youths currently being trained,” she said.

According to her, the project has several components with a very competitive selection process
“we start the process of asking potential trainees to submit expressions of interest, when this is done, we evaluate and ask them to submit a proposal and then we bring in both the private sector, experts in the field to access those proposals and then the potential grantees are ranked based on their proposals,” she said.

She said there is also a monitoring mechanism to ensure that the grantee do not default

“If a grantee defaults in the first component, it means he will not get the next one. This is one of the ways we check them . The entire money is not released to them at once. It is gradual,” she added.

The charge

The National Project Coordinator, IDEAS, Blessing Ogwu, charged the grantees to be committed to the initiative to reduce the number of unemployed youths in the country, stressing that the programme was created to give every Nigerian child the opportunity to learn and acquire skills.

She said the programme is targeted to reduce the increasing number of out-of-school children on the street in the country.

“The essence of this project is focusing on the skill acquisition to reduce unemployment in Nigeria. We don’t need anyone to tell us that we have so many youths who are unemployed.

“Most of our youths are unemployed and the only way is for the youth to acquire our skills,” she said.

The IGF Consultant, Prof. Ndem Ayara, explained that the project, scheduled to be implemented within one year, was a Public/Private Partnership arrangement.

“In the partnership, the public sector will support the consortium to implement the project up to 80 per cent, the private sector partner will provide 20 per cent.

“Of the 20 per cent by the private sector, they will contribute 10 per cent in kind and the other 10 per cent in cash,” he said.

He said It is the cash component of the private sector contribution that is expected to be the counterpart funding by the private sector.

The grantees were drawn from across the country.

Olusola Akintonde