By Olusegun Obisanya
To bridge digital gap in Nigeria and Africa, some organisations have pull resources together to train and develop youth to proffer solutions to national issues plaguing the continent.
Themed, “A world of unlimited possibilities,” the one week long training and development, which took place at the Redemption City of God, Mowe, Ogun State attracted many young people from Nigeria, Africa, Europe among others in attendance.
Speaking at the closing ceremony, Pastor in charge of Continent 3 of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, Prof. Funsho Odesola said authorities in charge of Nigeria’s education sector must develop digital curriculum that aligns with the current industrial revolution and close the knowledge gap.
He said, “I’ve said in many fora, the present education we have doesn’t connect with the reality of the future. The future is in the digital. Now, every six months, new things are coming up. What you learned about six months ago become irrelevant. And when you check our curriculums, they never connect with reality, with progress. They never address the today’s problems.
“And so, we have taken it upon ourselves to see that the young ones are equipped for the future. Not just people in the church, but people in Nigeria and in Africa. And what is happening here is the biggest you can have in Africa, to steer in them what the future look like. To think outside the box and to be able to hold and be relevant in the future. We are living in an age that profession has no future for the professional.”
Odesola, who disclosed that the youths are being trained and developed digitally to solve national problems and become employers of labour, called on government to do a bit of what they can do to promote digital skills among young enterprising Nigerian youth.
The Chief Executive Officer, Africa Missions Global, Eyono Fatai-Williams saw the digital training as a welcome development.
She said, “This initiative will be extremely impactful for the youth because it will be reaching a large number of young people based on what the digital initiative offers. We believe that with this initiative, we can reach a large number of youth, at least a million a year, on this. And you know that when you scale up young people with the digital knowledge, they can do anything. They can do anything in any sector that appeals to them based on their digital skills.
“And I’d like to say that we are partnering with the Incubator Nigeria team. We are partnering with them to scale up on the number of young people that they have previously reached every year. And we are going to ramp up that number because when you ride on what digital transformation can offer the world is your oyster.”
A member of Incubator Team, ‘Leke Adeboye posited that the digital skill knowledge training is borne out to assist and develop an average Nigerian youth.
“The programme started off with 12,000 people applying. They did an online mini test with 5,000 plus people and that ended up with a thousand people making it to the physical training. What we are basically trying to push is the agenda of helping the Nigerian youth in what we count for the future of work and the things you need to equip and grow yourself. This is the first of its kind in Africa, and we are hoping to be able to do more over time. After this, of course, it’s just seven days we’ve done here, there will be need for continuity for them to grow hub, for them to be able to come back and ask certain questions because it takes a while to reengineer someone’s mind and push them to the success that we want.”
Adeboye disclosed that what would have caused each participant N400,000 was heavily subsidised by the partnering organisations like the Incubator, Africa Missions Global, Zedi, among others.
Ensuring that more youth are captured into the digital scaling, more centres are being created across the country.
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