iDICE: Renewing strategic collaboration for helping Nigerian youths taking the innovation and commercialisation paths

Africa is widely described today as the youngest population in the world. This accolade did not just come on its own. It is a result of the high youth population that dots the landscape of countries that make up the continent. Statistics have not only shown that 60 per cent of the entire continent is aged below 25 but also that the world’s top 10 youngest countries by median age are in Africa. So, with the gains of the youthful population come with the responsibility of ensuring they are productively engaged to avoid consequences. So, the choice before the continent is either to leverage on this important sector of the population or face dire consequences of rising crime and other vices of youthful exuberance. Nigeria, with 53.7 per cent of her population aged 15-65 and a median age of 18, also carries the burden of either harnessing the bounties of her youthful population for sustainable development and growth. It is a make or mar situation for the most populous black nation in the world.

Perhaps, this may be the singular reason the government, at least since the beginning of the democratic journey in 1999, has come up with different schemes to not only harness the talents and skills of the Nigerian youths but also to make them productively engaged. From the Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria (YouWin) to NPower and Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS), the focus, one could deduce, is to make the youths useful to themselves and assist the country to grow through entrepreneurship and innovation. Even though, some of these schemes have recorded relative success, the huge gap of unemployment and youth restiveness has called for more creative ways of leveraging the youth population for the socio-economic development of the country. As at today, statistics have varied on the total percentage of youths that are without jobs in Nigeria. Whether one considers a Jobberman’s report that avers that 65 per cent of Nigerian youths are unemployed as at 2022 or Trading Economics forecast that puts unemployment rate among the youths at 53.4 per cent, what is clear is that the weight of getting the youths off the shackles of unemployment in Nigeria is a huge burden on the shoulders ofgovernment at both national and sub-national levels.

This heavy load of shedding the youth unemployment weight and the need to do more to cater for the employment yearnings of this demography explain the introduction of the Investmentin Digital and Creative Enterprises (iDICE) programme launched on Tuesday 14th March, 2023 in Abuja. The new scheme, which is to promote entrepreneurship and innovation in digital and creative industries, is fashioned to support the government’s job creation efforts. The target of the scheme includes harnessing the country’s youth talent pool (between the ages of 15 and 35 years) as well as equipping them with technology and creative skills to increase their employability. Furthermore, the iDICE programme is also designed to foster innovation, support the emergence and growth of more entrepreneurs in order to unlock their potential to create employment and drive new businesses and innovative ventures. To say that the new programme has a massive potential to impact significantly on youth unemployment and creation of jobs is an understatement. The programme is both ambitious in its conception and targets. While speaking at the event, the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, highlighted that the initiative is to be funded with $618 million sourced from different partners including African Development Bank (AfDB), the AgenceFrancais de Development, the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) as well as the Bank of Industry (BoI) who are co-financing the project with $170 million, $100 million, $70 million and $45 million respectively.  This is apart from another $270 million expected from the private sector and institutional investors. The huge amount of funding and partnership of private and public sectors as well as development partners is an indication that Nigeria means business in tackling youth unemployment through four critical areas of policy, infrastructure, access to finance and harnessing talents that abound in the country. The programme has a number of persons and institutions including innovation hubs, tertiary institutions, Small and Medium Enterprises and partners as beneficiaries. So, the question this piece seeks answers to is the roles of the innovation hubs in idea incubation and accelerations, assisting the Nigerian government to realise its aspirations with the iDICE programme.

Innovation technology and incubation  hubs are a melting point for innovators, entrepreneurs and people from the academia with the sole aim of collaborating, developing their ideas and bringing them to impact on both immediate and remote communities. Ideas are incubated, developed and commercialised in the innovation hubs. In other words, an innovation hub could serve as a rallying point for a programme such as iDICE because its focus areas align perfectly with the goals of innovation hubs. In his reaction to the launch of the initiative, Dr. Segun Aina, Chairman of Opolo Global Innovation Limited and President, African Fintech Network, noted that the iDICE programme is a bold and brave initiative by the Federal Government and its partners towards tackling the monster of unemployment that has bedevilledNigerian youths.

Aina averred that the programme has the capacity to impact Nigeria’s innovation ecosystem and energise its capacity to help the youths generate ideas, nurture them and commercialise such ideas in a number of ways.

One, the iDICE programme could find support in the Talent as a Service offering of the innovation hubs in Nigeria. By this, innovation hubs in the country could help the government to tame the high rate of unemployment through skilling, reskilling and upskilling youths with employability skills. Two, TaaS initiative of innovation hubs could help bridge unemployment gap by also nurturing and training young talents in skills that fits into the now and future job market. The lack of relevant skills is evidenced by the inability of the Nigerian graduates to fit into the job markets because they have skills that do not match available jobs. Therefore, the innovation hubs could assist to change this ugly narrative by identifying, on-boarding and supporting talents through capacity building, internship and mentorship programmes for industry experience. Three, the Nigerian innovation hub ecosystem could serve as a nurturing factory for founders and co-founders indifferent sectors of the economy to provide digital solutions for financial, real-estate, health and agriculture sectors within conducive spaces. This would go a long way in assisting the government’s drive for massive employment and job creation.

Four, the innovation hubs could serve as enablers, incubators and accelerators of innovative ideas providing a support system for entrepreneurs, indigenous innovators and startups. Therefore, they have the capacity to inspire sustained economic growth across the country. This emphasises the need to fully integrate them into the iDICE progamme as they could serve as a springboard for talented youths, young entrepreneurs and researchers. More importantly, the Nigerian innovation hub community has the strength to enable researchers in Nigerian tertiary institutions collaborate on and commercialize their researches.

In concluding the piece, the iDICE initiative is a good concept on paper. It could only be hoped that the implementation would be as ambitious and as collaborative as the conception has been. All critical stakeholders including the innovation hubs should be carried along in implementing a scheme that is adding the firepower to tackle the menace of youth unemployment in Nigeria.

Rasheed Adebiyi is the Head, Branding and Strategic Communication at Opolo Global Innovation Limted, Nigeria.