Closing Nigeria's skill gap: The way forward.

This morning I read an insightful article by Businessday Nigeria on the enormous skill gap constantly destabilizing Nigeria’s employment ecosystem and the amazing work Jobberman is doing led by her CEO, Hilda Kabushenga Kragha.

One indispensable fact highlighted by this publication is the failure of our tertiary institutions to offer adequate career advisory services and a lack of a deliberate framework for the instillation of soft employability skills.

I recently wrote an article on ‘The Ideal 21st Century Graduate’ and a major highlight of my write-up was that the hallmark of any quintessential graduate is adequate skills-based knowledge i.e knowledge in tandem with requisite skills.

 Arguably, a number of our institutions are fairly providing the knowledge needed, though outdated and, many a time, not sufficient. However, the requisite skills needed by these students are hardly given attention.

This lopsided learning has therefore created a big lacuna in the employability space in Nigeria. Nigeria has one of the largest youth population in the world as the country’s median age is 17.9 and this widening youth bulge can provide a lot of demographic dividends if carefully harnessed.

From my experience, one of the best ways young people can acquire these skills while schooling is to get involved in social and extra-curricular activities that can build their capacities.

Students need to get involved in activities that can develop their professional skills, either through volunteering or interning with relevant organizations, where possible.

In my years of working as a youth development professional, I have noticed that employers are beginning to realize the distinctive difference between graduates who have a lot of social and extracurricular experience against their counterparts who only have the academic knowledge received in school.

Fortunately, Hilda Kabushenga Kragha, through her youth engagement team at jobberman, currently headed by Ibijoke Sunmonu is doing great work across campuses in Nigeria. The team has been conducting soft skills training, career fairs and employability outreaches across campuses in the country.

I believe this work can be taken further by engaging the management of these institutions on their approach to encouraging the promotion of responsible and beneficial social activities within their institutions.

We need a collective and deliberate effort from stakeholders in the educational sector to promote and encourage the development of soft skills in our institutions so as to close the current skills gap.

We also need to seek more partnerships and secure more funding to implement and scale youth engagement and activities that would promote this learning.

Like I stated in my first article, the goal of Education is 'to become' and we must begin to take responsibility as a nation, as cooperates, as individuals and even as students for the future of our workforce.

We have the population! We have energy! We have a passion! We have the resources! We can do more!

As Bemjamin Disraeli once said: ''the Youth of any Nation are the trustees of posterity'', we need to take advantage of this unique demography!

We can close the skills gap! Let's do more!