Reforming skills training in Nigeria: working successfully with partners to make a difference
One of the biggest challenges for Nigeria’s education system is to keep up with the pace in meeting future productive workforce needs. Not meeting these needs could have damaging consequences for youth employment and national socio-economic development. A range of economic sectors, already struggling with significant skills mismatch in the labour force, lack skilled entry-level workers. Like many countries, Nigeria continues to have large numbers of youth not in education, employment or training (NEET) — looking for employment, and with little hope of finding decent and stable work. Access to quality education and relevant skills can make a big difference to young people being able to succeed in the workplace and in life.
Skills for Prosperity (S4P) Nigeria, a UK government-funded technical and vocational skills development (TVSD) programme, has shown how effective government support with private sector partnership can help young people into work and do so cost-effectively. Over the last two years, S4P Nigeria and its partners in the public and private sector have been developing apprenticeship and traineeship models that work for everyone. The programme is contributing to increased capacity for inclusive economic growth due to improved employability and labour productivity in high-growth sectors.
The S4P Nigeria approach for developing apprenticeship and traineeship models has prioritised stakeholder engagement. It has been successful in securing the buy-in and ownership of strategic public sector institutions at the national and sub-national levels. As well as bringing funding, it supports sustainability by ensuring that these stakeholders take an active lead role. The S4P Nigeria delivery team have been the facilitator, employing adaptable and flexible programme delivery strategies. Evidence of such buy-in can be seen by the ITF/NECA delegation’s recent self-funded study mission to the UK to benchmark and learn about UK policy and practice around apprenticeships, for local adaptation and implementation.
What are the critical success factors for the S4P Nigeria model?
i. Stakeholder Ownership and Buy-in: An Industrial Training Fund (ITF) case-in-point
A robust institutional capacity assessment of the Industrial Training Fund has identified what works and what does not at the systems and implementation level. The S4P Nigeria approach to building on existing structures and working closely with partners has enabled encouraging progress in the reform of apprenticeship and traineeship models. In agreement with partners, rather than “reinvent the wheel”, the approach involved reviewing aspects that were less effective and leveraging the most effective elements. This collaborative and holistic approach has resulted in the ITF taking ownership of NATS and promoting it as a good practice model for Nigeria.
ii. Flexible and Adaptable Approaches
The S4P Nigeria programme has, from the start, focused on adaptive management as a principle, by “learning and adapting by doing”. It is a concept which uses a structured and systematic process that allows continual improvements in decisions, policies, and practices by testing what works and what does not and learning what to change to improve outcomes.
S4P Nigeria recognises that delivering change in complex environments is usually non-linear, often political, and frequently hard to predict. It requires a shift away from tightly conceived targets to allow the focus to be on delivery, without over-specifying processes. As such, it introduces a degree of pragmatism that cannot easily be accommodated by other programmes whose success is measured on targets. Our ability to apply adaptive management has allowed for increased credibility and trust from our partnering agencies.
There is a strong commitment in Nigeria to fostering innovation and technology through technical and vocational skills development, with TVSD seen as central to economic development in Nigeria. Our partners and stakeholders would like the Nigerian education and training system to be responsive to local, regional and global changes. The continuous adaptation and improvement of training and learning programmes, including apprenticeships and traineeships, needs to be dynamic and flexible to ensure skills needs are met. Thus, S4P Nigeria has played an important role in contributing to apprenticeships and traineeship being better able to respond to the needs of the labour market and meet new emerging priorities.
