The Honourable Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, has decried the disconnect between training and employer needs, limited work-based learning opportunities and poor access to internationally recognised certification as major challenges undermining youth employability in Nigeria.
Alausa stated this at the Hire From Nigeria side event on the margins of the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York(UNGA 81), where he outlined the Federal Ministry of Education’s role as the supply engine of the national talent-export agenda and its efforts to build a talent pipeline directly connected to global employment opportunities.
He said Nigeria is repositioning its education and skills system to produce trained, certified and adaptable talent capable of competing in the global outsourcing and digitally enabled services market.
According to him, Nigeria’s greatest asset is its people, a young, ambitious, English-speaking and increasingly digitally capable population, and the task of the education sector is to turn that scale into verified competence and reliable service delivery.
The Minister noted that Nigeria’s large youthful population, English-language advantage, cultural adaptability and growing digital capabilities provide a strong foundation for participation in the global outsourcing and digitally enabled services economy, which offers opportunities to create jobs, increase export earnings and enable Nigerians to build globally sourced careers without leaving the country.
He stressed that education was central to making that opportunity sustainable, adding that skills, quality and reliability would determine Nigeria’s competitiveness in a rapidly changing global market.
To close the gap, Alausa said the Federal Ministry of Education is pursuing curriculum reform, stronger accreditation and quality assurance, as well as expanded digital and technical training through federal institutions and credible private training providers.
He emphasised the need for a permanent employer-led feedback loop, not occasional curriculum reviews, noting that employers should be involved from programme design through training, assessment, certification and recruitment.
The Minister said the reform agenda also seeks to change perceptions of technical and vocational education by positioning skills training as a direct pathway to income, enterprise and global opportunity.
He disclosed that the Federal Government’s free TVET programme has attracted more than one million applications with 160,000 trainees supported through approximately 1,200 centres nationwide, including Federal Technical Colleges and accredited private training centres.
He added that the Government is also promoting multiple pathways to employment and enterprise, including university education, technical and vocational education, apprenticeships and continuous upskilling, with each pathway providing opportunities for employment, entrepreneurship and further learning.
Alausa said preparing young Nigerians for an economy increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and advanced technologies was another priority, stating that Nigeria must train young people to work with artificial intelligence, not to compete with it on routine tasks.
He explained that emphasis was increasingly on skills that complement technology, including judgement, creativity, domain knowledge, data literacy, cybersecurity, cloud services, software development, customer success, quality assurance and AI-enabled operations.
He disclosed that through the Digital Training Academy, the Federal Government is partnering with global learning providers, including Coursera and Pluralsight, to provide 32,000 Nigerians with free access to professional digital and technology training covering high-demand and emerging fields including product management, cloud computing, cybersecurity, information technology automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning, agentic artificial intelligence, financial technology, parallel computing, quantum computing and natural language processing.
He added that the Student Venture Capital Grant is also supporting students in STEMM disciplines to translate innovative ideas into viable enterprises, strengthening the connection between education, innovation and enterprise.
Given the pace of technological change, the Minister said Nigeria’s education system must also enable young people to learn, unlearn and retrain throughout their careers. He therefore challenged international employers, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)operators, investors and development partners to move beyond expressions of interest towards practical partnerships and investable talent pipelines.
He urged employers to define their skills requirements, co-design training programmes, provide work-based learning, recognise credible Nigerian certifications, recruit from Nigerian talent pools and provide feedback on workforce performance.
He further urged BPO operators and investors to establish and expand delivery centres beyond Nigeria’s largest commercial cities while supporting training infrastructure, connectivity, quality systems and management capability.
According to him, development partners can support the effort through scalable certification, instructor development, inclusion of women and underserved communities, labour-market intelligence and outcome measurement that tracks employment rather than training numbers alone, while international institutional partnerships and centres of excellence in Nigerian institutions would further strengthen global linkages, benchmarking and knowledge transfer.
He added that in return, the Federal Ministry of Education will deepen industry participation in curriculum development and certification, expand market-relevant TVET and digital-skills pathways, strengthen accreditation and quality assurance, and improve the connection between institutions, training providers and employers.
These efforts, he said, form part of the Ministry’s role on the supply side of the National Talent Export Programme, which supports the national ambition of creating one million export-linked jobs and 10 million globally certified Nigerians by 2030, adding that the Ministry is also leading the Supply Technical Working Group under the programme.
