Firm tackles unemployment with technical skills
… Designs platform for hiring artisans
With the statistic of over 37 per cent of Nigerian youths, totalling over 21 million individuals, currently unemployed, founder, iCreate Africa, Bright Jaja, has engaged technical and vocational skills to solve the crisis.
In a recent spotlight on CNN, Jaja emphaisised 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, has successfully trained over 20,000 young people in vocational and technical skills. With his expansion to Nigeria, he targets training over 5 million young people across the continent.
He added that the firm has designed a digital platform called Skillers, a digital marketplace for hiring artisans and sourcing building materials. Skiller.ng formalises the process of acquiring and hiring artisans in the construction industry.
On the skills empowerment, he said, “We identify experts and match them with aspirants who basically enroll in an apprenticeship for about 3 months to one year. Some of the trades we focus on are carpentry, graphic design, web design, and basically everything technical and vocational.”
Jaja’s expansion to Nigeria is heralded by an annual vocational and technical skills event dubbed, iCreate Skills Fest, which is to inspire and empower young people in this technical sector.
According to him, iCreate Skills Fest aims to help change perception among youths on vocational and technical skills 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.
” 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 without a skill and walk out with a park product they created. And we want to achieve that across Nigeria.,” Jaja said.
