Bridging the Skills Gap: Empowering Youths To Be Economically Successful

Imagine a world in which every young person enters the job market with more than just credentials. Where they also possess the specific skills required to prosper in the digital economy. This perspective is critical for addressing the paradox of rising unemployment despite numerous unfilled job vacancies caused by the growing skills gap. This is a crisis that has a direct impact on economic sustainability and the future of Nigerian youth.

A 2023 poll conducted by GetBundi, a STEM and digital skill education technology platform, emphasises the importance of this issue. Just 19 of 100 National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members questioned have any sort of digital capabilities. Furthermore, the poll found that more than 100 million young Nigerians lack the digital skills required to secure modern career prospects. This emphasises the crucial need for focused educational initiatives.

Competent, innovative, and future-focused academic institutions are not just imagining this future. They are actively shaping it, empowering students to bridge the skills gap and thrive in a rapidly changing digital landscape. This happens by utilising innovative teaching methodologies and cultivating strong partnerships.

The Skills Gap: A Call to Action

Beyond unlocking learning in the classroom and improving learning outcomes, possessing essential skills boosts perseverance and self-development, ensuring that learners are unlikely to be out of jobs post-graduation, thereby significantly increasing revenue and lifelong livelihood. Their absence undermines social mobility, productivity, and well-being.

A report by Dell Technologies predicts that 85% of the jobs that will exist in the next decade have not been created. Additionally, McKinsey & Company states that 87% of companies acknowledge they either already face a skills gap or will encounter one within a few years. This underscores an urgent need for a paradigm shift in education and education delivery. Jobs that existed a decade ago are disappearing while entirely new roles emerge, as illustrated in Table 1.

Table 1: Disappearing jobs and roles.

This transformation demonstrates three fundamental truths:

1. The digital revolution has redefined not just how we work but the nature of work itself. Mastery of digital skills—from coding to data analytics—is now essential for economic survival and success. The capacity to efficiently use digital tools, platforms, and technology is known as digital skills. Data analysis, word processing, social media management, programming, and cybersecurity awareness are a few examples. People with these abilities can effectively explore and take advantage of the digital economy.
2. Soft skills are indispensable. Even when technology speeds up, human-centric skills like communication, flexibility, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence are still essential. Interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies, including collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, flexibility, problem-solving, emotional intelligence, and effective communication, are all included in the category of soft skills. For instance, people with emotional intelligence are able to comprehend and control their feelings during interactions with coworkers, while those with adaptability are able to react quickly to changes in a dynamic work environment.  
3. Education systems need to be transformed. Current curricula are adequate in design but have shortcomings in implementation and delivery. The current implementation of curricula frequently fails to incorporate emerging digital tools and the deliberate development of critical soft skills. This disconnect exacerbates the growing skills gap, leaving students unprepared for future jobs that value practical skills and competencies.

Strategic Approach to Bridging the Gap

Future-focused academic institutions must develop a comprehensive framework to address these challenges. The following approaches could provide cutting-edge, accessible, and industry-relevant education that will result in more employable graduates.

Step 1: Integrating Digital Skills Development

• Curriculum Innovation: Digital literacy is embedded across all disciplines. Public policy and administration students, for example, learn digital research techniques,  data analytics, visualisation, and computer coding.
• Technology-Driven Learning: Through advanced learning management systems, students access interactive tools and AI-enhanced resources and content that enhance digital proficiency.

Step 2: Cultivating Essential Soft Skills

• Project-Based Learning: Students engage in real-world problem-solving activities, fostering critical thinking and creativity.
• Collaborative Opportunities: Group presentations, peer mentoring, peer review, and team projects cultivate communication, leadership, and adaptability skills.
• Practical Examples: In communication courses, students role-play to enhance public speaking skills, while leadership training involves managing group projects to simulate workplace scenarios.

Step 3: Fostering Industry-Education Partnerships

• Internship Programmes: Partnering with leading organisations to provide hands-on experiences for students. This should be mandatory for all learners irrespective of the programme.
• Masterclasses and Mentorship: Industry experts regularly engage with learners through lectures, workshops, and mentorship schemes.
• Employer-Aligned Curriculum: Working with employers of labour to ensure that the academic programmes meet industry demands.

A Collective Responsibility

Bridging the skills gap requires a collaborative effort from all stakeholders. Here is how we all can contribute:

Educational Institutions:

• Modernise curricula to emphasise digital skills and incorporate soft skills-based activities.
• Invest in faculty development and advanced teaching tools.
• Implement assessments that measure real-world skills.

Government:

• Provide the necessary infrastructure and supportive policies to aid skills acquisition.
• Allocate significant funds for educational innovation and track its progress.
• The Nigerian National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF) must be fully operational and interoperable with other national and regional skill frameworks.
• The government will lead the private sector in initiatives that connect graduates with employers through apprenticeship programmes.

Industry:

• Get involved in curriculum development to incorporate industry needs.
• Offer free and paid internships, apprenticeships, and mentoring opportunities.
• Invest in youth training programmes.
• Create frameworks with educational institutions for the upskilling and reskilling of low-skilled employees.

How Forward-Thinking Educators Are Addressing the Challenge

At Miva Open University, we are committed to addressing the skills gap and empowering young people with the tools they need to thrive in today’s fast-evolving global economy. Through the following initiatives, we are proud to play a pivotal role in bridging the skills gap and preparing the next generation of leaders to contribute to economic success both locally and globally:

• Innovative Programmes: Some of our university-wide courses, such as “AI and Information Literacy” and “Creative Thinking for Founders,” are designed to prepare students for the future by providing them with hard, soft, and digital skills.
• Global and Industry Partnerships: We work with international and local organisations to bring best practices to our learning environments. We implemented the professor of practice framework to strengthen industry-academia relationships for mentorship and job-based networking for our learners.
• Accessibility: Recognising the importance of accessibility, we are leveraging digital technologies to extend education to underserved communities, breaking barriers of geography and socioeconomic status. Through virtual learning platforms, mobile-first training programmes, and community-based education hubs, we are breaking down geographical barriers and ensuring that more young people have access to high-quality education.
• Project-based Learning: We implemented project-based learning for over 70% of our core courses. This contributes to our goal of achieving real-life and authentic assessments.

The Road Ahead

Closing the skills gap is not just an educational challenge; it is an economic imperative. The economic viability and prosperity of our country will be determined by the youth’s capacity to thrive in the digital economy. The skills gap worsens with each day we delay. Another group of students graduates unprepared for the real world every semester and we delay reform.

Thus, our universal skills-building framework is designed to ensure that students acquire essential, highly transferable skills that will ensure that Nigeria has a more skilled workforce that can result in greater productivity and ultimately contribute to a stronger economy overall.