By Ngozi Nwankwo
The Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, has said Nigeria is repositioning its education and skills system to produce trained, certified and adaptable talent capable of competing in the global outsourcing and digitally-enabled services market.
Alausa stated this at the Hire From Nigeria side event on the margins of the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York.
He said the Federal Ministry of Education is serving as the supply engine of the national talent-export agenda, building a pipeline directly connected to global employment opportunities.
“Nigeria’s greatest asset is its people: a young, ambitious, English-speaking and increasingly digitally capable population. Our task in Education is to turn that scale into verified competence and reliable service delivery,” he said.
The minister said Nigeria’s youthful population, English-language advantage, cultural adaptability and growing digital capabilities provide a strong foundation for participation in the global outsourcing economy, with potential to create jobs, increase export earnings and enable Nigerians to build global careers without leaving the country.
He identified gaps between training and employer demand, limited work-based learning and access to internationally recognised certification as challenges that must be addressed.
To close the gaps, he said the ministry is pursuing curriculum reform, stronger accreditation and quality assurance, and expanded digital and technical training through federal institutions and credible private providers.
“We need a permanent employer-led feedback loop, not occasional curriculum reviews,” Alausa said, adding that employers should be involved from programme design to assessment, certification and recruitment.
He said the reform seeks to reposition technical and vocational education as a direct pathway to income, enterprise and global opportunity.
According to him, the Federal Government’s free TVET programme has attracted over one million applications, with 160,000 trainees supported across about 1,200 centres nationwide, including Federal Technical Colleges and accredited private training centres.
The government, he said, is promoting multiple pathways to employment, including university education, TVET, apprenticeships and continuous upskilling.
Alausa said preparing youths for an economy shaped by artificial intelligence is a priority.
“We must train young people to work with artificial intelligence, not to compete with it on routine tasks,” he said.
He listed complementary skills to include judgement, creativity, data literacy, cybersecurity, cloud services, software development, customer success, quality assurance and AI-enabled operations.
He disclosed that through the Digital Training Academy, the Federal Government is partnering with global platforms, including Coursera and Pluralsight, to provide 32,000 Nigerians with free access to professional digital training in product management, cloud computing, cybersecurity, IT automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning, agentic AI, financial technology, parallel computing, quantum computing and natural language processing.
The Student Venture Capital Grant, he added, is supporting students in STEMM disciplines to translate ideas into viable enterprises.
