News: British Council Moves To Boost Graduate Employment in Nigeria

British Council has commissioned a three year research project to conduct an in-depth investigation into the challenge of unemployment facing graduates of higher institutions in Nigeria. The research is led by the Institute of Education, University of Ibadan and University of Lagos, Nigeria and the University of London, in partnership With Kenyatta University, Kenya and University of Free State, South Africa.

It is being designed to assess the overall situation in the selected countries and identify recent initiatives that sought to address the challenges towards reducing inequality in access to higher education, improving quality and ensuring relevance, Speaking at an interactive session with stakeholders in the education sector, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Prof. A.O. Bamiro, stated that preparing young people to enter the labour market is a critical responsibility for universities.

"The relevance of their programmes and the employability of their graduates are posing an increasing challenge for the universities, particularly in view of two sets of statistics: enrollment and youth unemployment rates.

"Statistics reveal that while Africa has the world's youngest population, with great expectations for education, nearly 60 per cent of those who are unemployed are youths between the ages of 15-24, and a significant number of these are graduates.
Bamiro noted that to increase the graduates' chances of obtaining decent jobs that match their education and training, universities need to equip their students with the necessary competences to enter the labour market and to enhance their capacities to meet specific workplace demands.

In his remarks, Dr. Tristan McCowan, of the Institute of Education, London, stated that the project is expected to provide insight into and greater meaning and understanding of how learning, teaching and research in universities can link with graduate employability and inclusive development, He revealed that more focus is needed on measures to enhance the ability of graduates to contribute to Nigeria's labour markets' requirements and drive the economy. The lead researcher noted that greater synergy is needed between supply of graduates and the needs of labour market.

The Director of Programmes, British Council Nigeria, Amir Ramzan, noted that if the challenges facing the education sector are not addressed, the problem will be compounded and it takes a long period of time to be sorted out.

"From these small beginnings, we will create a lot of discussions from the challenges facing higher education in Nigeria and other countries in this research.

"There are challenges facing Nigeria's higher education, but those challenges present opportunities to work with relevant stakeholders, with our partners in the United Kingdom, universities, quality assurance agencies are all very keen to build on the already strong relationship with Nigeria in order to try and alleviate and help in the finding solution to some of the issues facing Nigeria," he said.

Source: Guardian