At the sidelines of the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly UNGA in NewYork; United States of America, Nigeria’s Minister for Industry, Trade and Investment; Dr. Doris Uzoka-Anite has launched the National Talent Export Programme, NATEP on behalf of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in New York.
This is in a bid to position Nigeria as a talent export hub designed to create not less than one million jobs in the next five years as a special purpose vehicle owning to its large population of teeming tech savvy youth doing well in all faucet of life.
In her opening remarks at the launch of the initiative at the Microsoft office in NewYork; the minister highlighted the need to ensure Nigeria takes the lead in exporting global talents that are doing well across the world which will also drive a huge investment in training and also attracting more investment in talent exportation.
She said that the initiative is in line with President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope agenda to diversify the Nigerian economy, create sustainability opportunities, and generate about 50 million jobs for the youths over time.
“NATEP is an initiative that will serve as a special purpose vehicle SPV to position Nigeria as a leading global hub for service export, talent sourcing and talent export.
“As part of our strategy towards achieving this, President Bola Tinubu whose agenda for job creation, we have initiated a national talent export programme for Nigeria, which targets the creation of one million jobs across Nigeria.
“With a target of over five years in line with the theme of this year’s UNGA, which is rebuilding trust and igniting global solidarity, accelerating action on the 2030 agenda and the sustainable development goals towards peace, prosperity, progress and sustainability for all”.
Uzoka-Anite further divulged to the large gathering comprising of world leaders and other giant tech companies across the globe like; Amazon, World Economic Forum, Microsoft group, Flour Mills Nigeria, Meta, Google and a host of others that the global talent sourcing industry is valued at $620 billion as at 2020 and industry pundit have forecasted it will be valued at about $904 billion by 2027.
“Nigeria can supply top talent for the global service export and outsourcing business, with over 1.7 million graduates from higher education institutions entering the workforce annually, this will reduce the burden of unemployed and over-dependent on the Government for jobs.”
According to her, she also disclosed that NATEP was specially created to arrest the bottleneck facing the talent and service sector export industry, which will enhance competitiveness, and innovation, and drive sustainable development growth, Empowerment and training through trade and value chain exchange.
“Nigeria is ready to become a global hub for talent export, as the government is ready to take full advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (ACfTA) to penetrate the continental huge market and target job opportunities.
“As a country, we have a significant value proposition for regional and global markets for the export of services. We will actively target Greenfield and brownfield job opportunities in the United Kingdom, Europe, China, Canada, the United States of America and a host of other countries.”