Firm advocates use of technical skills to tackle unemployment

Founder, iCreate Africa, Bright Jaja, has advocated technical and vocational skills to tackle the rising unemployment rate in the country.

In a recent spotlight on CNN, Jaja, emphasised the need to train more youths to help boost self-employment across the country.

“The goal is to get more young people in Africa to embrace technical and vocational skills without being afraid of the stereotype,” he told CNN.

Jaja, who created iCreate Africa, in 2017, in South Africa, said he had successfully trained over 20,000 young people in vocational and technical skills.

With his expansion to Nigeria, he targets training over five million young people across the continent.

“We identify experts and match them with aspirants, who enrol in an apprenticeship for about three months to one year. We focus on carpentry, graphic design, web design and everything technical and vocational,” he said.
He said his expansion to Nigeria was heralded by a yearly vocational and technical skills event dubbed, iCreate Skills Fest, which was to inspire and empower young people in this sector.

According to him, iCreate Skills Fest aims to help change perception among youths by bringing technicians and craftsmen together to showcase their skills in a contest, all to encourage youths to embrace skills trade as a profitable career choice.

“After the competition, we have a skills awards night where we celebrate the winners, give them cash prizes and empower them with high-value tools and equipment to support their business. We also link them to jobs.

“We have designed a digital platform called Skillers, a digital marketplace for hiring artisans and sourcing building materials. The platform formalises the process of acquiring and hiring artisans in the construction industry.

“Next up for us is to build a skills park made up of different structures that promote technical and vocational skills from start to finish. We want young people to walk into that park without skill and walk out with a product they created. And we want to achieve that across Nigeria,” Jaja said.