Two representatives of the Nigeria Youth SDGs Network, Euphemia Uwandu (Monitoring and Evaluation Officer) and Dr Shadrach Akpem (Advocacy and Engagement Lead) attended a 2-day ONE campaign Jobs creation partners meeting/consultation on 28th and 29th September 2021 in Abuja, Nigeria
The purpose of the meeting was to gather key insights from campaign aligned organizations and networks on specific policy ideas, opportunities and risks that can feed into a campaign to tackle joblessness in Nigeria. This is part of the regional effort (Africa) to build a consensus, identify common trends for a job creation charter and direct the planning of country-level work on job creation.
Therefore, the network alongside the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG), BudgIT Foundation, The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), AIESEC, AFRILABS, PWC, Africado and others alike were represented during the discussions. During the meeting, available data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), IITA, NESG Research, CBN, and PWC were presented and deliberated on to have an overview of the economy; and jobs/unemployment and business environment constraints. The data drew attention to sectoral performance in 2020, GDP growth rate projections for 2021-2025 (per cent), key sectors of strong economic growth in Q2-2021, state dimensions of the unemployment rate (as at 2020Q4 in per cent), Nigeria investment environment/weak investment climate, identified sectors of high growth potential, and sectoral distribution of youth employment in Nigeria.
The data served as a guide to answer questions such as;
- Sectors with the potential to create significant decent jobs in Nigeria?
- The current involvement of the private sector in creating jobs for the unemployed youth?
- The effectiveness of existing government employment programs in Nigeria
- Reasons for high informality
- Biggest policy and regulatory bottlenecks to private sector development in Nigeria
The provision of the answers to the questions was instrumental in making recommendations on protecting people in informal employment, the transition of informal businesses to formal businesses, measures to deliver and scale impactful programs in Nigeria, urgent actions by the government to boost finance for SMEs and startups and improve ease of doing business. These recommendations were made considering those that will require low/high effort and have low/high impact.
The recommended informed ideas and suggestions will be collated to feed into the actionable and campaign-able solutions of the larger African continent to address unemployment in the continent by ensuring the creation of 15 million jobs annually.
