Chinese firm collaborates with Abia State to train youth

The China International Development and Investment Corporation Limited (CIDIC), and Abia State Multi-Skill and Entrepreneurship Development Centre, are partnering to train Nigerian youth. 

During a meeting with a representative of CIDIC, Oswald Wong, Abia State Governor, Okezie Ikpeazu said the partnership was sequel to the CIDIC proposal to train youths for the Chinese contractors and improve the capacities of the Centre’s production factories. 

Factories in the Centre include vocational skills, furniture production, building and construction, garments production, steel and metal fabrication, electrical engineering among others.

Speaking on the development, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Kiara De-Luke Academy, a member of the Logistics De-Luke Consortium, Endi Ezengwa, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of the former United Kingdom-based, Kiara College, said the Chinese technicians that would operate the industrial machines would also train the youths on how to operate them.

According to Ezengwa, the CIDIC and Centre partnership will help reduce unemployment in Abia State, and provide a good avenue for technology transfer.

He told The Guardian that the 36,000 Abia youths that had been profiled under the Abia State Education for Employment (E4E) programme that he coordinates, would also benefit from the venture.

The project would be sited on an approximately 9.893 hectares of land, spanning three LGAs of Ukwa East, Ukwa West, and Ugwunagbo.

The Enyimba Economic City is said to be an audacious and ambitious project conceived by Governor Ikpeazu with the intent of connecting SouthEast states and four of the six states in the South-South of Nigeria, and designated as a special economic zone by the Federal Government to have a Free Trade Zone status.

The Enyimba Economic City project mission is to create an economic hub central to the nine south east and South-South states and linked with high grade access roads, rail and sea ports that will transform the region into a manufacturing and industrial power house with ancillary drivers of commerce, logistics entertainment, education, health and lifestyle living.