The Ministry of Youth and Sports Development is set to expand its digital skills training by involving 500,000 youths nationwide as part of the COVID-19 stimulus budget. The digital skill training titled: ‘A New DEEL for the Nigerian Youth’ is aimed at empowering Nigerian youth towards the digitization agenda of the country and further economic growth. This was disclosed in a statement on Thursday made by The Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr. Sunday Dare. The statement read in part, ”Through the stimulus plan budget under President Muhammadu Buhari, we can now implement 65 and 75 percent of DEEL concentrating on digital skills acquisition to bridge the existing gap we have in the area of technology.
“The free IBM and Microsoft training in partnership with the Ministry are ongoing and accessible via the Ministry’s sites, while a partnership with Google will soon to be activated to train youths.”
States across the 6 geopolitical zones have already been chosen for the first phase of 3 months’ training in coding and each of the participants’ would be issued a laptop to begin work after completion of training.
Nigerian youths would also have the opportunity to be trained in the fields of Artificial and robotics, mobile device repairs, data collection, and other technologically oriented aspects.
 "Dubai Submerged In Flood")