3 ways the government should create jobs in Akwa Ibom state
In the first piece of this series, I introduced the consensus position of the electorate that unemployment is the biggest issue facing our state. In this second piece, I outline the state of our labour force and where the job opportunities in Akwa Ibom may be. Read the first piece here and follow along below.
The current state
According to survey data from the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS), only 12% of Akwa Ibomites have a tertiary education. The bulk of the labour force in the state possesses either a primary or secondary school certificate. NBS data also reports that over 90% engage in some kind of farming activity, with 27% relying solely on farming as a means of livelihood. Considering the foregoing, the agriculture sector must be at the heart of any jobs revolution in the near term, as it holds the ace in providing work for our low-educated, low-skilled masses.
- Agriculture jobs
Cassava, cocoa, and oil palm are our natural strengths, according to the Nigeria investment promotion council. To harness these strengths, much of the commentary has been related to large-scale and mechanized farming. The problem with this model is the loss of jobs that inevitably occurs when production is scaled. Learning from the APAC region, where 80% of its food is provided by smallholder farmers, we need to adopt a similar smallholder approach. In that region, the agriculture industry employs over 400 million people. To enable the 90% that already do some farming, our focus must be smallholder focused.
The central question the government thus needs to answer is: how might we enable higher productivity and earnings for smallholder farmers. Answers to this question will likely take the form of, better inputs for farmers, better marketing, and aggregation services that provide a route to market. These are not new ideas, the difficulty has always been how to implement them. The FADAMA program has garnered robust data across decades that shows the efficacy of aggregating farmers into groups with a trained facilitator to help them apply best practices to achieve these.
I propose the state engage a horde of thousands of skilled extension workers to facilitate farmer user groups. These extension workers would be the implementors of a program to increase yields and farmer income by >20% annually. A gargantuan task, but an audacious 'moonshot’ worth applying ourselves to. Employing and managing this unprecedented scale of extension workers will prove challenging for the government and its agencies. A PPP model with innovative agriculture technology companies can help bridge this gap. Participating farmers should be required to register and submit their annual returns to the state IRS. This would help to widen the tax bracket.
2. Increasing Formal employment and widening the tax net
The government should consider 3 opportunities to increase formal employment. The first is to attract remote digital workers who earn via the internet and can work anywhere. These workers export services, earn from outside the state, and bring that income to spend locally, creating a multiplier effect. The second is by enabling the growth and success of small businesses, and the third is by providing the opportunity for high growth technology startups to thrive.
a. Remote digital work. Remote workers need electricity, internet, and comfortable, affordable housing. On internet, the state should consider waiving right-of-way fees like Osun State did in order to accelerate broadband penetration. It should consider a dedicated desk within the ministry of labour to centralize services for remote workers that leverages new media and modern marketing campaigns to attract them.
b. Helping small businesses thrive. When polled, people in non-formal enterprises that operated small businesses in Akwa Ibom reported their biggest challenges as poor demand, electricity, access to credit, and transportation .
To solve low demand, the government must work to facilitate trade and exports by small businesses. A World Bank assessment showed that the Youwin grants from the GEJ administration were beneficial for job creation and enterprise growth. The government should consider a similar program with a focus on export focused businesses. This also helps to solve the access to capital problem. For the most promising small businesses, the government should create low cost intervention loans or guarantee loans from commercial or local microfinance banks.
On electricity, the state is well positioned via its ownership of Ibom Power and Ibom Utility. With the recent changes in the constitution, Akwa Ibom can create a self serving electricity market that guarantees constant power. The government should consider directly funding the mass metering of businesses, leveraging existing work done by the National Mass Metering Program. This could be done in a stepwise manner that first creates dedicated business parks with guaranteed power supply. This will attract more industries and manufacturers to the state and improve formal employment.
For transportation, Akwa Ibom has one of the best internal road networks in Nigeria, thanks to the investments of previous administrations. The advent of Ibom air and the Uyo Airport has also improved connectivity and opened up the state more. The state should find ways to push the federal government to fix the federal roads that connect the state. This will help ease the movement of people and goods in and out of the state.
c. High Growth Startups. To take part in the startup opportunity, the government should invest in Venture Capital funds and consider matching investments in startups with the express provision that the company base some of their operations in Akwa Ibom. A $20,000–$100,000 matching investment, for instance, could be provided to interested startups contingent on them setting up an office in Uyo that employs a minimum of 5- 10 people. This could have a significant multiplier effect. Companies expressly working in business process outsourcing should also be able to tap into this scheme to encourage them to site operations in Akwa Ibom.
3. Investing in knowledge, Research & Development
The reality of today’s world is that there’s no known formula for development in Akwa Ibom. Nobody has done it in our clime or time before, so chances are that the way we achieve it will be unique to us. Accepting this means we have to take on an experimental mindset and fund the people who are trained in experiments and creating new knowledge; these people are our researchers, who are mostly in our universities. The state requires an annual research challenge with a budget that gives grants to researchers with specific goals in key domains. For instance, an agricultural innovation challenge would provide progressively larger grants to researchers who can demonstrate specific progress, such as a 5% increase in yield based on their techniques and interventions. This will spur research and innovation, and as winners emerge and are backed, the state can fund the technology transfer process to enable commercialization, so it earns a return. The state already has a good track record in private investing with it’s profitable return from investing in Anchor Insurance. Going one step up in the value chain by investing in primary research will be tremendously beneficial to the prosperity of the state.
In the next edition of this series, I’ll dig deeper into the fiscal strategy the state should consider and how it might motivate its workforce towards higher productivity.
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