The rapidly expanding skills gap in the Information and Communications Technology industry is becoming worrisome and it is high time we started questioning the effectiveness of various ICT trainings claimed to be offered by the government in partnership with some technology firms.
It is interesting to note that the telecom industry is valued at about $68bn and has been growing at the rate of 24.42 per cent over the past 17 years. This supports the argument that the sector remains a formidable one with a lot of potential for further growth.
However, the worrisome dearth of relevant ICT skills is a lacuna that the government and the industry should be worried about and all hands must be on deck to address it once and for all.
Technology in Nigeria is evolving at a frenzied pace and there is an ever growing need for technology professionals in different sectors of the economy. This has led to an increased demand for ICT skilled Nigerians who are required to steer the industry forward to meet up with the ever increasing demand of the emerging digital economy.
Sadly, a number of executives and start-ups in the industry still complain about the dearth of skills despite the fact that ministries such as science and technology, communications as well as education, often sign various ICT training yearly Memorandum of Understanding for ICT training.
However, there is no point spending money on any ICT training that does not translate to adding value or bridging the ICT skills gap in the country.
At this point that the lacuna is becoming glaring, one should start questioning the efficacy of the ICT trainings which many Nigerians have undergone, especially the ones organised by different ministries.
The Federal Government of Nigeria has signed various pacts, agreements, MoUs, partnership deals and many more with tech companies to train various categories of Nigerians. There are a number of these pacts but let me highlight some, and probably at the end, you should be able to draw your own conclusions.
The big question is: If there is still ICT skills gap at this point that we are lagging behind (compared to the Western world), what will happen when technology becomes robustly deployed nationwide?
According to several media reports, the Digital Bridge Institute and other tertiary institutions are collaborating with the IBM Skills Development and Research Institute to train 25,000 resource personnel in five years (2013 – 2018) per institute.
Similarly, a partnership deal was signed with Cisco to build Cisco Academy for the highest certification (CCIE: Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert) in Nigeria and with — Finish Reading on the Punch