By Adedapo Adesanya
The Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Mr Bosun Tijani, has disclosed that so far, about 550,000 applicants have indicated interest in the first phase of the government’s plan to train three million tech talents in Nigeria within two weeks of initiating the scheme.
The Minister recently revealed that the training would be done in three phases, starting with the training of 30,000 persons in the next three months as dictated by the 1-10-100 model.
“We are using a 1-10-100-model. We are starting with 1 per cent of our 3 million target, and that will be for the first three months. And that 1 per cent is going to be 30,000 people,” he said earlier this month.
On Friday, October 13, the applications were opened for both trainers and those who want to be fellows and have seen the current surge in interest from all over the country.
The Minister also mentioned that the 30,000 people would be broken down to capture each state in Nigeria based on a calculation of its population and economic activity.
He noted that after the completion of the first phase, it will move on to the 10 per cent, which he hoped would be the beginning of the project, and then further to the 100 per cent target.
Speaking at his first press briefing after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Monday in Abuja, he gave insights on the progress, adding that the programme would change the country’s ICT sector.
“While we were initially targeting just 30,000 for the first batch, we have actually received an application 550,500 applications from across the country,” he said.
Mr Tijani also added that, “It is not just another training. We all know that technology under this government is becoming a major part of how we do things and how we repurpose public service but you can’t really leverage technology if you don’t have the talent to drive it.
“For technology to truly work for Nigeria, we need a very deep workforce that can power our ambition.”
He noted that this training will also help Nigeria export talent to countries like Japan which is facing a dwindling population and needs to rely on exporting talent to power its tech-oriented economy.
“We’d like to be a net exporter of talent, we’d like our young people who are technologically savvy to work remotely for companies all over the world,” he added.
