The United Kingdom (UK ) on Wednesday reiterated its commitment to the Nigerian growing digital economy .
Ms Vicky Ford, the UK Minister of Africa at the Foreign Commonwealth, expressed the UK’s commitment during her visit to the Development Office of DigiGirls Centre in Lagos State.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that DigiGirls, an initiative of Cybersafe Foundation, had in November 2020 embarked on digital upskilling of 2,400 girls and women in collaboration with the UK Government.
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Ford said she was excited to be visiting Lagos because so much had been said about the very busy technology sector in Lagos.
According to Ford, Nigeria is a very good friend of the UK, strong family, strong support, saying the UK was proud to be supporting the entrepreneurship capacity of Nigerian women.
She said that often, women had been left behind, hence her excitement at visiting the DigiGirls, which the UK Government had been supporting for a few years now .
“We want to make sure that women and girls are engaged in the same skills as others and close the gender gap.
‘’You never have economic strength, strong freedom unless you support women and girls to have the same right, opportunities and investment as men.
‘’And with what I am seeing, I am impressed that nearly to the end of a three months course, women have been building new skills, getting employment and helping others.
‘’They are going to have employment opportunities in tech areas which could not have been possible before,’’ she said.
Mrs Confidence Staveley, Convener, DigiGirls, said that this was the pilot phase co-designed with UK Government.
The convener said the programme showed that there was a strong need in the ecosystem for digital skills acquisition to ensure that the barriers of digital classification were removed.
“Cybersafe Foundation has been very committed to carrying out its vision of inclusive and safe digital skills in Africa starting off from Nigeria, with emphasis on inclusive digital training specifically.
‘’It is because statistics show that women are excluded from digital economy and if we continue this way, in years to come, women will not be able to earn an income.
‘’Our work here is ensuring that we are able to attract women and girls within the ages of 15 to 40 with skills, and upskill them on employable digital skills because we give them the skills currently in want,’’ she said.
“We are training the women and girls across five learning tracks which include graphics design, digital marketing , data processing and so on and these are demand skills that employers want.
She said that more organisations were willing to hire these women more than are already available.
According to her, there is a very high demand for skilled women but the women do not have the skills.
“That is why we are plugging this programme to bridge that gap,” she said.
Oluwadamiloa Adeoye, a beneficiary of the CyberSafe Foundation and UK Government appreciated the benefactors for the amazing opportunity, saying it was a fantastic experience which enabled her to improve on her digital skills.
Adeoye said that she had also started training ladies to have better visions of themselves using the learning skills from DigiGirls to impact as much ladies as possible.
She, however, urged government to embrace such programmes by opening more opportunities for digital learning, saying “the world is going digital and without any digital skills one would be unemployable”. (NAN)
