Sunday Dare

The Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr. Sunday Dare has expressed satisfaction at the 3,000 Nigerian youth that have so far taken advantage of the ministry’s

online training and attained competency badges under the Ministry’s DY.ng initiative.

The Minister disclosed this during the maiden Digital Conversations with Nigerian youth hang out on Zoom yesterday. The program focused on Digital Skills prospects for Nigeria Youth.  

The Minister said the training, a product of the Ministry’s collaboration with IBM, has been hugely beneficial to a large number of Nigerian youth who have taken their time to tap into the free online courses during the COVID-19 shutdown to learn and acquire skills  in areas of their choice.

More youth continue to sign up for the training, which started two weeks ago when the COVID-19 crisis began in Nigeria, even as it crossed the 3,000 beneficiaries milestone.

The Minster urged those that are yet to sign up for the free training to tap into the opportunity during this period, “the badges could add to your curriculum vitae and serve as an added advantage in the job and entrepreneurial market, which is that the skills will give our youth what we call AA – Added Advantage, to their degrees or diplomas.”

The DY.ng initiative comprises of both online and offline training in a wide range of areas such as Web Development, Cloud, Blockchain, Enterprise Design Thinking, Data Science and Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Coding, Internet of Things, APIs and Microservices, Containers and Kubernetes, Cybersecurity, Quantum Computing, DevOps amongst others.

The courses are to be delivered to over 500,000 Nigerian youth in various centres across the country over the next 2yrs but due to the national shutdown only the online are currently accessible and the rate at which our youth are studying is nothing short of impressive.

Meanwhile, the Ministry has continued to work with other strategic globally to deliver industry desired skills and training opportunities to the youth through the its DEEL Program, which was launched at The Ministry’s Africa Youth Day celebration in Abuja last year.  

The DEEL program is set to equip the Nigerian youth with Digital Skills, Employability, Entrepreneurship and Leadership skills.