World Bank, Kaduna govt to empower 600 youths on digital skills

The Kaduna State Commissioner of Budget and Planning, Mr Muhammad Abdullahi has said the state in collaboration with World Bank and Rockefeller Foundation is set to empower more than 600 youths on Digital skills.

Abdullahi made this known to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja.

“We are training a huge amount of people; we are taking about 600 people and training them for six months course on digital skills.’’

“Kaduna has been investing a lot of time to design entrepreneurship and digital skills programme. One of the major programmes we are doing is with the World Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation.

“After that, we will enrol another set of trainees to build their capacity and provide them with digital opportunities. It will be a continuous programme.

“The courses in the programme include graphic design, website design, leadership, business strategies and other digital related skills and capacity across the world.

“We are doing it to see how to deepen this sort of programme within the Eco System of Kaduna State and so we have a lot of applications so far and the programme is starting in three months.

“We invested so much on this programme to ensure we built a new crop of digital entrepreneurs in the state in a way they will contribute to reducing the level of unemployment.

According to Abdullahi, the training is meant for people of all level of skills, adding that the fundamental requirement is the individual’s interest, drive and commitment to acquiring the skills.

“The training are free because Kaduna State Government is bearing the cost together with World Bank and Rockefeller Foundation for people in the state.’’

He said that this was done so they could actually build their skills to get jobs or build businesses that could employ other people.

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“However, we are particular about women because digital skills allow women to work even from their homes.

“So, for women that have given birth or still at home because their husbands don’t allow them to come out, all you need is your computer, internet connection and you are in the global market place.

“What we want is for Kaduna to become the silicon valley of Nigeria,’’ he said.

He said that the empowerment, inform of digital skills training was to reduce the rate of unemployment.

He said that it would get the youths to shun criminalities and other social vices in the state and country in general.

Speaking on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Abdullahi, the former Economist and Deputy National Programme Manager for MDGs at the Presidency said he was excited about how Nigeria took up the implementation in 2015.

“In 2017, we launched the SDGs report, the first for any sub-national government across the world and we did this through an event in the UN General Assembly.

“So, Kaduna has been up to date, we had a SDGs acceleration conference earlier this year to move Kaduna’s implementation of the SGDs through an expeditious manner.

“So, I am quite excited about the prospect of implementation, we are moving very fast to achieve all the 16 or rather 17 goals,” he said.