The Federal government has announced the commencement of the N-Knowledge Program, a component of the current NPower Program. According to Sadiya Umar Farouq, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, the N-knowledge program would hold in the six geo-political zones of the country including the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
This announcement was made by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Bashir Nura Alkali in a statement.
Alkali explained that “the N-Knowledge is a component of the N-Power Program focused on equipping young Nigerians with relevant skills and certification to become competent workers, innovators and entrepreneurs prepared for both the domestic and global digital job market.”
“N-Power (N-Knowledge) program will upskill 20,000 young Nigerians on the global radar as exporters of world-class services and content in the creative and information technology sectors”, he said.
It was revealed that the N-knowledge program would also cater for youth in the tech space, this was affirmed by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, he said that the new program was launched to equip youth with adequate knowledge and competence in software development and hardware training which will make Nigerian youth competitive in the rising demand for software developers and the tech space at large.
According to him, “the training component is targeted at developing competencies of the youth in software development and Hardware training which will be catalyzed to make Nigeria compete in the outsourcing market for software development.
“It will develop the skills and capacities along the skills set in the value chain of mobile apps and website development while boosting the talent development effort for the growth of information technology industry in Nigeria”.
“The program consists of centralized in-camp training for 3 months with a 6-month apprenticeship across the 6 geo-political zones. A total of 20,000 beneficiaries will participate in the program”, he added.
He further explained that certificates would be given to qualified trainees at the end of the N-Knowledge program. Also, the trainees would be introduced to not only hard skills but also soft skills that would equip them to be competitive in the global market.
“This is significant because the trainees will be introduced to Life-Skills and attitude re-orientation, work ethics while rules of engagement are also exposed to them,” the statement read.