Wema Bank in partnership with the federal government of Nigeria has launched a FGN-ALAT Skillnovation programme, aimed at supporting over three million Nigerians with essential digital skills required to succeed in the global economy.
Speaking at the event, Vice President, Kashim Shettima described the Skillnovation Programme as a “transformative initiative” that “users in a new era of digital empowerment for” Nigerians.
In his words, “We are compelled to tread this path by the direction in which the world has headed, a world of disruptive technologies redefined by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
“This initiative is a response to the evolution of the modern business environment, an acknowledgement that digital skills have become the cornerstone of economic ease and expansion,” Shettima added.
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Speaking at the launch of the FGN-ALAT Skillnovation Programme, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Wema Bank, Moruf Oseni, said the initiative was aimed at addressing problems youths and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Nigeria face in accessing funding, technology, infrastructure, and market.
Oseni said that $50m in funding had already been pledged by investors and that in partnership with state governments, physical hubs will be built to “serve as hotbeds for the kind of ideation and collaboration that will birth destructive innovation’.
The Skillnovation Programme will benefit two million Nigerian youths and one million MSMEs by providing them with global standard training for modern digital skills, software engineering, product design, data analytics and digital marketing.
According to the stakeholders of the FGN-ALAT Skillnovation Programme, the programme will establish 15 state-of-the-art ICT centres, strategically placed across the country, to provide individuals and businesses alike with access to cutting-edge digital training, resources, and support, beginning with Lagos and Borno states.
Thereafter training centres would be established in Katsina, Anambra, Oyo, and Kano states as part of the first phase of the implementation of the initiative.
In the second phase of the Skillnovation Programme state-of-the-art ICT centres would be built in Delta, Kaduna, Ogun, Bauchi, Kwara, and Ekiti States.
