A Non-Governmental Organisation(NGO), Ophel Consult and Enterprise, on Sunday in Enugu, trained youths on technology, agriculture and entrepreneurial skills that would make them self-reliant and reduce unemployment.
The training was tagged, “Strategic Shift Conference’’ with the theme, “The Language of the Future.”
Speaking at the event, the Managing Director of the NGO, Obinna Enoch, said the training would expose Nigerian youths to various skills that would help them in life.
He said that the conference was aimed at connecting young entrepreneurs with industry leaders to build on their skills dreams and visions.
“For this year’s conference, we looked at four major areas which is on technology, entrepreneurship, finance and agriculture.
“On technology, we want to show young people how to migrate to tech; we want to show them how to be financially prudent as well as how to use digital and non-digital tools to keep making money.
“On entrepreneur, we are showing them tools that will enable them to run their businesses and reduce overhead cost while in agriculture; we show them the value chain process in agriculture,” Enoch said.
He explained that the organisation had a mentorship academy where it mentored youths on their areas of interest within three months.
The managing director added that he created the platform where young people could learn and get practical information that would help them shift from where they were and where they wanted to be.
He said that participants were drawn from Lagos, Ebonyi, Anambra, Delta, Rivers, Enugu and other states in Nigeria.
Also speaking, the Executive Director, Lead Network Africa, an advocacy group, Mr Chukwuma Okenwa, urged African leaders to invest on human capital development for the future of its youths and prosperous continent.
He said that Africa was blessed with rich human and natural resources as well as huge land and youthful population but it was not prosperous due to poor investment on youths.
Okenwa spoke on the topic, “African Human Development an X-ray of the needed Human Capital of the Future.’’
According to him, the continent has too much human being with less human capital development.
Okenwa, who is the guest speaker at the event, said African leaders should invest in human capital development especially on the youths for its growth, development and global competitiveness.
“Africa needs to be part of the solution as we cannot afford to be missing out in terms of global contribution to the welfare of humanity whether it is in the aspect of health or others.
“We want to see more interventions, research, creation of vaccines and improving healthcare system.
“In terms of technology and aviation, African needs to advance more to compete with countries like France and U.S.
“The world is talking about 7G; other advancements and about quantum computers that can do marvelously well when one talk about analysis but Africa system is still struggling to be equipped with basic pentium and configurations.
“My question has always been-where is African in all these? Certainly, we need to think to be able to align with others as research and development are inseparable,’’ he said.
Okenwa, who explained that other continents were moving forward by investing critically into research, stressed Africans had lecturers who were academics without research fund, grants and motivation for them to go further into research.
“It means that they are not at par with their contemporaries globally,” he said.
A participant, Kelechi Ibeako, described the training as, “mind blowing programme”, adding that the knowledge would enable him to multiply his income.
