By Ademola Akanni, Abuja
The Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr. Sunday Dare has expressed delight at the number of Nigerian Youth that have taken to online training and attained competency badges under the Ministry’s DY.ng initiative.
He said the training, a product of the Ministry’s collaboration with IBM, has been hugely beneficial to a large number of Nigerian youth who have taken the opportunity to tap into the free online courses during the COVID-19 shutdown to acquire skills in areas of their choice.
The Minster urged those that are yet to sign up for the free training to tap into the opportunity during this period, “The badges could add to your curriculum vitae and serve as an added advantage in the job and entrepreneurial market, which will give our youth skills in what we call AA – Added Advantage, and add to their degrees or diplomas.”
The DY.ng initiative comprises both online and offline training in a wide range of areas such as Web Development, Cloud, Blockchain, Enterprise Design Thinking, Data Science and Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Coding, Internet of Things, APIs and Microservices, Containers and Kubernetes, Cybersecurity, Quantum Computing, DevOps amongst others.
The courses are to be delivered to over 500,000 Nigerian youth in various centres across the country over the next 2 years, but due to the national shutdown only the online are currently accessible.
Meanwhile, the Ministry has continued to work with other strategic global institutions to deliver industry desired skills and training opportunities to the youth through the DEEL Program which was launched at the Ministry’s Africa Youth Day celebration in Abuja last year.
The DEEL program is set to equip the Nigerian youth with Digital Skills, Employability, Entrepreneurship and Leadership skills.
