Employability Summit: How young Nigerians can turn gaps in agric value chain into fortune

Nigerian youths looking to grow productivity and boost their employability in agribusiness need to shift their focus to converting gaps in the value chain into fortune, Dare Odusanya, general manager at British American Tobacco Nigeria Foundation, said on Thursday at the PT Employability Summit.

The business executive spoke during a session on how to spot opportunities in the creative economy.

Mr Odusanya stressed that youths need to put their innovative potential to work in order to come up with solutions that can make a difference in contemporary Nigeria.

“If I ask majority of people to fish. Yes, you raise nets. Yes, you warehouse production. But there are activities in a grid that is far more than that,” Mr Odusanya said.

His argument centred on the importance of embracing technology and other digital processes in delivering value addition and improving finished goods further.

Nigerian youths under the age of 30 account for more than three out of every five people in the country, raising concerns that Africa’s most populous country, where multi-dimensional poverty is at one of the highest levels in the world, may be set for a population explosion in the near future.

The World Bank’s latest data puts Nigeria’s population at 227.9 million.

PREMIUM TIMES inaugural employability summit, which held in Lagos, featured an array of conversations around how Nigeria can leverage its population strength by not only scaling up talents in the formal sector, but also improving the capacity of the self-employed to engage in ventures that can drive economic growth.

“If you must be an entrepreneur, learn the rudiments,” Mr Odusanya said, adding that businesses that want to diversify should be willing to go through the rigour of mastering new processes.

He alluded to how Mikano, in spite of being a powerhouse in making generators, is branching out into the production of passenger vehicles and pick-up trucks.