A sustainable talent ecosystem is needed for Nigeria to achieve sufficient digital literacy — Usman Adio

In the last ten years, the talent ecosystem across the world has taken a new dimension and so in Nigeria where young people are transitioning into tech.
Because of the resources and time required to be skillable, several others have had it rough navigating their way into the new digital economy. This, however, has had an adverse effect on productivity, and revenue while also taking a toll on the employability of young Nigerians. To a large extent, the labour market, and industries have been disrupted since the world seeks digital talents so they can efficiently sustain the constant demands of digital products and services in workplaces.

While Nigeria’s Tech ecosystem is evolving, talent deficits have become more pronounced, businesses are recruiting prospects in the leading sectors to fill their talent needs in order to propel mechanisms that foster the economy. Therefore, more than ever, skilled talents are a necessary catalyst to support developing economies like Nigeria. Co-Creation Hub in 2022 documented a report on the talent gap which revealed the view that Nigeria has no talent scarcity in the IT sector but a scarcity of senior tech talents.

But what are the facts?

Riding on with a population of over 200 million, 33.3% of Nigeria’s labour force is unemployed as of the last quarter of 2020, this has greatly reduced bearing different criteria in evaluation to 4.1%, in the first quarter of 2023 as published by the National Bureau of Statistics. The report by the NBS has generated a lot of resentment among social users, some have claimed that it failed woefully to capture the reality of average Nigerians who are probably languishing in poverty and cannot sustainably take care of their dependents.

The high number of people without a job or scalable income has been traced back to a lack of digital literacy especially among young people between 18 to 35. It was established in 2021 by Dare Sunday, the then Minister for Youth and Sports, that the gap in digital skills especially of youths is a major cause of unemployment as many youths lack the required digital skills to take up digital job opportunities.

Meta, through its Director of Public Policy, Anglophone West Africa, Adaora Ikenze, also expressed worries over the high digital illiteracy in Nigeria as at 2023 noting that many are still basically illiterate about the use of technology and how it impacts their lives.

Similarly, in a 2023 survey conducted by (GetBundi Science) an online education technology outfit, more than 85% of Nigeria’s graduates do not have digital skills. Digital literacy is not an option but a requirement for any individual wanting to participate in the booming economy and take a bite in competitive roles for a scalable and reasonable income in a digitized world.

GetBundi survey further exposes that more than 100 million young Nigerians are unfit to take up good job opportunities that require such modern digital skills, an evaluation that corroborates the 2021 World Bank Development report which revealed that more than 50% of Nigeria’s population lacks digital skills and consequently cannot use data services.

As important as digital literacy is however, the literacy needed to acquire such success is not well defined, and the skills are not included in many learning curricula, this going forward, needs to be corrected if indeed the new minister for communication, information, and digital economy  (Bosun Tijani) is serious about the plan and training of 1 million Nigerians in technical skills by 2025 and hoping to achieve a resounding 95% digital literacy by 20230. An inclusive curriculum is pivotal and will enable better tracking and improvements of digital literacy. It is in this vein that the Nigerian government through the National Information Technology Development Agency, (NITDA) launched a digital literacy framework aimed at setting a digital literacy and skills agenda for Nigeria by giving a clear and consistent definition of digital literacy for the purpose of building curricula, modules, and programmes. The National Digital Literacy Framework (NDLF) adopts the European Commission’s Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp 2.2) with the incorporation of required elements of Mobile Information Literacy (MIL), that are crucial to Nigeria and Africa. The NDLF is made up of six dimension areas including the five dimension areas of the DigComp 2.2 which are; Information and Data Literacy, Communication and Collaboration, Digital Content Creation, Safety, Problem Solving; and an additional Devices and Software Operation as proposed by UNESCO. These competence areas include 23 competencies and 6 proficiency levels that will be used to educate, monitor, and evaluate digital literacy in the country.

Usman Adio is a leading IT expert/consultant with a key interest in leadership and human capital development. Over the last 5 years, Usman has built and supported tech startups through products and services.