Ministry partners organisations to equip 500, 000 youths on digital skills

By Franca Ofil

The Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr Sunday Dare, says 500,000 youths will be equipped with digital skills to enable them to acquire digital tools to become entrepreneurs.

Dare said this in Abuja on Monday during the singing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Junior Achievement Nigeria, a Non-Governmental Organisation.

Junior Achievement is the world’s largest organisation dedicated to giving young people the knowledge and skills to own their economic success, plan for their future and make smart academic and economic choices.

According to him, based on data and statistics, there is a digital gap across Africa.

“To close the gap there will be need for us to pave the way for our youths with necessary digital skills to be able to produce the digital tools they need to become entrepreneurs,’’ he said.

Dare said the ministry was not just working to empower the youth but to invest in them and provide them with necessary requisite skills to prepare for the 21st century challenge.

According to him, the ministry has shortlisted 250 youths that will be handed over to the company to achieve the objective of the MOU.

The Executive Director of the NGO,  Mrs Simirola Nnogugu, said  the organisation was determined to inspire and educate young people to become conscientious business leaders.

Nnogugu said that the organisation would partner the ministry to empower the youth with digital literacy skills.

“We are now 20 years old and we needed to scale up our operations so we decided to engage the government to empower the youth with digital skills,’’ she said.

Similarly, Nigerian Company WILCO, also signed an MOU with the ministry to contribute to the youth development.

Mrs Tokubo Lawal of WILCO said that the company specialised on ICT services which would enable the youth to practise  what they learnt in school.

Lawal said that the organisation had been working with youths by putting them on networks to enable them to specialise in their different fields.

WILCO is an oriented company with focus on providing ICT solutions and building Data Communication Infrastructure for Individuals.  (NAN)