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GE recommends new strategy to tackle youth unemployment

By Wole Oyebade
22 December 2015   |   2:22 am
Citing the advantage inherent in youthful population, General Electric (GE) Nigeria has recommended fresh strategies to tackle unemployment in the country.

unemployment_0Citing the advantage inherent in youthful population, General Electric (GE) Nigeria has recommended fresh strategies to tackle unemployment in the country.

GE, in a Skills White Paper presented recently, urged the government on the importance of homegrown talents, education that is focused on science and technology and exploring the pipeline of skills needed to leverage the technological advances of the future.

The Skills White Paper, a research document targeted at improving the capacity of Nigeria to harness the potential of its growing young population, observed that the Sub Saharan Africa is estimated to be home to a quarter of people aged 24 and below, with Nigeria contributing the most significant number of Africa’s youth population.

The paper, however, identifies that Nigeria is currently unable to provide new employments and prospects to majority of its young and growing population, a situation that is buttressed by statistics that put youth employment in the country at 50 per cent .

President and Chief Executive Officer, GE Nigeria, Lazarus Angbazo, said that this situation must change “because it condemns large numbers of young people to low living standards and represents a terrible waste of human capital that undermines future economic growth, but also because it poses a risk to social and economic stability.”

Should Nigeria be adequately prepared to engage this potential workforce, Angbazo said that the country stands a chance to reap enormous dividends from the opportunity that its human capital presents .

He said that achieving this would propel growth positively and engender prosperity amongst the people with families having more money to spend on the education and healthcare needs of families.

To harness the opportunities that the future presents, the GE boss said his company embarked on a thorough interrogation of the situation that the country faces at the moment, and has come out with recommendations highlighted in the Skills White Paper.

The steps recommended by the white paper include: A stronger education system with deliberate emphasis on science, technology, education and mathematics; more open and flexible labour markets and a broader talent localisation strategy pursued in partnership with global companies; and exploring the pipeline of skills needed to leverage the technological advances of the future.

Angbazo said further that the document, titled: “Building strong workforces to power Africa’s growth: The future of work in Africa” conforms to the determination of GE, to partner with countries and other global concerns to localise skills and build the capacity of host countries to gainfully employ their teeming population in the near future.

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