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The European Business Chamber Nigeria (EuroCham) is calling on the Federal Government of Nigeria to formally partner with international industries to close the country’s technical workforce gap, warning that a shortage of certified, industry-ready talent risks slowing the country’s fastest-growing source of foreign direct investment.
The call was made in a new advocacy position paper released by the Chamber.
The paper, titled “Bridging Nigeria’s Technical Workforce Gap: A Public-Private Roadmap for Harmonizing Industrial Skills and Accelerating European Investment Impact,” cites recent research estimating that Nigeria’s skills gap costs the economy approximately $14 billion annually, with deficits reaching 68 per cent in ICT competencies, 63 per cent in agricultural expertise, while the power sector is currently operating at only half of its required skilled staffing capacity.
The recommendations come as economic ties between Nigeria and the European Union reach a new high point. Since the two sides elevated their relationship to a strengthened strategic partnership in March 2026, the EU has sustained more than €35 billion in annual trade with Nigeria and approximately €26 billion in European foreign direct investment, supporting over 130,000 direct jobs and accounting for 31 per cent of Nigeria’s total foreign trade, making the EU Nigeria’s largest trading partner and largest single source of foreign direct investment.
EuroCham’s paper argues that this investment momentum is running ahead of the domestic pipeline of certified technicians needed to support it and proposes five coordinated interventions: aligning national technical certification with international industrial standards; introducing tax offsets and duty waivers for corporate investment in training infrastructure.
Others include digitising and fast-tracking expatriate quota processing to accelerate structured technology transfer; launching industry-led dual-education apprenticeships with polytechnics; and establishing a unified national registry to track technical skills development and local-content compliance.
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The Chamber noted that its proposals are designed to build directly on reform efforts already underway, including the Federal Government’s 2025 technical and vocational education expansion programme, which enrolled about 250,000 students, an ongoing amendment to the Polytechnics Act, and TETFund’s planned 2026 investment in modernising engineering school equipment.
The General Manager of EuroCham Nigeria, Chigozie Okwara, stated: “Nigeria’s partnership with European investors has never been stronger, and this paper reflects our commitment to matching that momentum with a workforce that can deliver on it. Government has already taken real steps — expanding technical education, modernizing polytechnics, and we see this framework as a way to accelerate that work, not compete with it. EuroCham is ready to invest alongside government to make sure Nigeria’s technical talent grows as fast as the capital coming into the country.”
Okwara called on the Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment, in coordination with the Ministry of Labour and Employment and the Ministry of Education, to convene a Joint TVET Steering Committee within the current quarter as the first step towards implementing the paper’s recommendations.
The full roadmap sequences reform across three phases through mid-2027, moving from institutional setup to policy integration and a pilot rollout of apprenticeship programmes.
The advocacy paper outlines a five-pillar roadmap to align technical training with European industrial investment as EU-Nigeria trade surpasses €35 billion annually.
