The Federal Government has announced its plan to train about 500,000 youths across the country with digital skills. This was disclosed by the Ministry of Youth and Sports Development after securing funding under the COVID-19 stimulus budget.
The training, under the initiative called: ‘A New DEEL for the Nigerian Youth’, was meant to begin in December 2019, but was placed on hold due to lack of funding to fully implement its components.
The Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr Sunday Dare, said in the statement, “Through the stimulus plan budget under President Muhammadu Buhari, we can now implement 65 and 75 per cent of DEEL concentrating on digital skills acquisition to bridge the existing gap we have in the area of technology.
“We had great ideas on my resumption of office but due to COVID-19 and funding challenges, our vehicles for achieving the initiatives were slowed down but not stopped.”
Dare also stated that the ministry was able to train over 30,000 youths during the lockdown leveraging partnerships with IBM and other technology organisations in various states.
He said, “The free IBM and Microsoft training in partnership with the ministry are ongoing and accessible through the ministry’s sites, while a partnership with Google will soon be activated to train youths.
“States in the six geopolitical zones have been selected for the first phase of coding for Nigerian youths, where each youth undergoes three months’ training in coding and is given a laptop to commence work upon completion of the training.
“The ministry will train the youth in the areas of Artificial Intelligence and robotics, mobile device repairs training, coding, data collection and other technologically oriented aspects.”