Our institutions produce job seekers, but the economy now rewards value creators.
Nigeria’s youth challenge is often described as a problem of unemployment. That diagnosis is incomplete. The country does not simply have a shortage of jobs. It has a mismatch between the way its economy creates opportunity and the way its institutions prepare young people to participate in it.
For decades, Nigeria’s education system, labour policies and youth-development programmes were designed around a straightforward assumption: young people would acquire formal education, enter paid employment, and gradually build economic security through wage income. That assumption no longer reflects reality.
Formal employment remains important, but it is no longer the primary source of opportunity for millions of young Nigerians. Across the country, economic activity is increasingly being driven by entrepreneurs, freelancers, digital workers, artisans, creators and owners of micro and small businesses. Indeed, much of Nigeria’s youth policy architecture remains focused
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