Entrepreneurship and Youth Empowerment in Nigeria: The Imperative for Enhanced Digital Skills Development

The study examined the role of entrepreneurship in youth empowerment in Nigeria, particularly focusing on the imperative for a well-developed digital skills development system. Available statistics show that Nigerian youths are faced with the huge problem of unemployment and poverty due to a lack of or inadequate employability skills, as the schools in the country are not imparting skills that are substantially relevant in the global labor market to enhance their graduates’ global competitiveness. Consequently, out of the 160 million youth in the country, 53.4 percent are unemployed, representing more than half of the youth population. Thus, the main objective of the study is to demonstrate that provision of enhanced digital skills for youths will help address the unemployment (and poverty) challenge among youth in the country. This is because such digital skills have the potential of enhancing the ability of the youth to establish e-businesses. Obviously, the Nigerian state would be the major beneficiary if the youth digital skills development were given the attention it deserves. The study relied mainly on secondary data and analyzed that data using content analysis. The study revealed that youth unemployment is a product of mismatch in skills and overdependence on the oil sector, which creates very limited job opportunities. Previous efforts at youth empowerment have failed to produce the desired result because of policy disarticulation, which is not in consonance with the socio-political and environmental realities. Hence, it is the conclusion of this paper that increased youth population is a blessing to the country; however, to achieve the blessings higher youth population brings, deliberate and strategic efforts must be made to invest in youth digital skills development. The paper recommends, among other things, that investments in youth empowerment should be intentional and calculated towards reducing the huge youth unemployment, and efforts at job creation should be strategically directed towards youth digital skills development. This would enable massive youth participation in the global digital economy and create the much-needed jobs and alleviate poverty in the country.