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By Chinenye Anuforo
Nigeria is accelerating a national strategy to convert its expanding youth population into a global talent export engine, aiming to generate at least one million jobs, unlock new foreign exchange inflows and expand its share of the $4 trillion global services trade.
At the Nigerian Talent Export Programme (NATEP) in partnership with the World Economic Forum (WEF) yesterday in Lagos, government officials, private sector leaders and development partners outlined an emerging framework that links education, industry demand and cross-border labour markets to position skilled Nigerians for remote and offshore service roles.
NATEP National Coordinator, Teju Abisoye, said Nigeria’s services sector already contributes 50 per cent to GDP but accounts for just 10 per cent of exports, signalling a structural imbalance the country must urgently correct. She noted that Africa’s participation in global service trade remains below one per cent, a gap that presents economic opportunity if countries can supply globally competitive talent.
“This is about enabling large-scale job creation, scaling foreign exchange earnings and strategically diversifying Nigeria’s exports through talent,” Abisoye said, outlining NATEP’s priorities: strengthening conditions for business process outsourcing firms, securing service contracts abroad, and rapidly improving Nigeria’s human capital pipeline.
The WEF’s Manager for Reskilling Revolution and Skills Initiatives, Genesis Elhussien, said global employers increasingly flag skills shortages as the number one barrier to business transformation.
Drawing from the Forum’s Future of Jobs report, she noted that 41 per cent of job skills in Nigeria will change within five years, slightly above the global average, with the highest demand projected in artificial intelligence, data analytics, cybersecurity, fintech and digital services.
“Employers are deploying frontier technologies, but they cannot find the talent to scale. The gap between training outcomes and employer needs is widening,” Elhussien said, urging a redesign of skills pipelines, assessment standards and curriculum priorities.
Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment Dr. Jumoke Oduwole announced that the Federal Executive Council has approved a national coordination framework for services exports, which will be supervised by her ministry and executed through NATEP. She also confirmed presidential approval of a National Intellectual Property Policy, a digital trade platform, and Nigeria’s move toward ratifying a continental protocol on digital trade to expand cross-border market access.
She said Nigeria’s digital and mobile services exports grew from $7.3 billion in 2010 to $1.25 billion in 2022 and, with targeted policy support, could generate at least $17 billion in new export revenues and deepen foreign exchange supply in the coming decade.
“We are aligning policy, infrastructure and talent to make Nigeria a net exporter of digital, professional and creative services,” Oduwole said.
Education Minister Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa framed the agenda as a demographic and economic imperative, noting that 140 million Nigerians are under 30, at a time when ageing global labour markets are struggling to meet workforce demand. He said Nigeria must translate youth population scale into productivity by expanding technical training, industry-aligned learning, digital certification pipelines and apprenticeship models.
Alausa disclosed that 2.2 million job vacancies currently exist across technology-driven fields including software engineering, AI, cybersecurity, automation and machine learning. He added that government-backed digital training programmes, run in partnership with global learning platforms, are already enrolling thousands of learners with funded certification and job pathways.
Participants also heard that a national workforce assessment jointly developed by NATEP and the WEF Skills Accelerator Network will be published in the coming weeks, forming the evidence base for a final national action plan.
Business leaders at the event emphasised the need for clear industry hiring pipelines, unified skills standards, and scalable talent placement models that allow Nigerian professionals to compete for global remote jobs.
“With the right alignment between education, industry and policy, Nigeria can shift from being a consumer of global services to a dominant exporter of talent,” Abisoye said.
