Princewill Odidi|25 April 2016|8:13am
The fall of the Berlin wall, the eventual spread of globalization and the opening of international markets including the application and use of technology in market transactions introduced a new phase in international market relations which had a direct effect on the rise of unemployment in Africa, Nigeria inclusive.
As globalization thrived, Asian countries brought into the international demand for labor, workers requesting low wages but bringing on board very high skill performance.
They where ready for the new opportunities opened to Asia and Eastern Europe resulting to globalization.
The influx of low paid geniuses in the workforce led to labor migration into Asia, in what experts refer to as Business Process Outsourcing or BPO.
Africa and Nigeria in particular was hard hit because while the rest of the world were attracting skilled jobs into their workforce with emphasis on information technology and software development as in India, our Educational system and Universities were undergoing decay.
While the rest of the world chunked out geniuses requiring low pay, Nigeria due to corruption and decay of our ivory towers chunked out graduates with little or no knowledge of ICT, some so poorly trained that they could barely express themselves.
Corruption, poor Educational funding, low academic morale, sorting, and poor research funding contributed to this decay.
Now How do we fix unemployment?
We can only fix unemployment by fixing our Educational system, that's where the problem begin. Our graduates cannot develop and sustain entrepreneurial skills because they are poorly trained.
Today foreign firms doing business in Nigeria come along with their own staff, diversification of the economy has become a problem because our workforce is unprepared for it.
Our dominant service economy, instead of creating private sector entrepreneurs, we are busy creating salary expectant job seekers.
The problem is, that's what our Educational system produced. It's not late to fix Africa, just invest in the right sector.
Princewill Odidi
Writes from Atlanta.
