The Honourable Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Dr. ‘Bosun Tijani has announced the kick-off of the second phase of the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) initiative which is set to position Nigeria as a net-exporter of talent.
The 3MTT second phase will train a total of 270,000 Fellows bringing it to 10% after the first 30,000. The initiative has so far attracted about 1.8 million registration from intended trainees in the 774 local governments across Nigeria.
According to the Honourable Minister: “Today we announce the launch of the second cohort, which is the pilot phase of this programme. Our 270,000 new Fellows will have the opportunity to go through their courses in the next 12 to 18 months, and the goal here is to continue to provide them with cutting-edge content that they can learn from at their own pace and also link them up to physical learning locations close to where they live.”
“As we continue to build out these opportunities, our goal is to support our people to ensure that we can give them the skill set that they require to participate in the global digital economy.
“We understand that as we empower them, we will end up strengthening our ability to defend our GDP as a country, to defend the complexity of our economy, as well as ensure that we continue to drive the growth that we want to see in our beloved country.”
The Honourable Minister disclosed that his Ministry is engaging with partners to provide support for Fellows who may choose to start technology-focused businesses after their training.
“As we continue to interact, we are working with partners to ensure that those of them who want to go the route of entrepreneurship can be supported to kick off their small businesses to start their technology startups and hopefully help create a solution to many of the problems that we face in the country that technology can help address,” Dr. Tijani stated.
The 3MTT initiative, which was launched last November, is the largest talent accelerator in the world targeted at driving effective and efficient use of technology both in transforming government services in Nigeria and also creating a workforce that can deepen the application of technology across all critical sectors.
