VP Osinbajo Attends Presidential Dinner For Global Youth Employment Forum (GYEF) In Honour Of DG Of I.L.O, Mr. Guy Ryder On 02/08/2019

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REMARKS DELIVERED BY PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, VICE PRESIDENT, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA AT THE GLOBAL YOUTH EMPLOYMENT FORUM DINNER ON THE 2nd  OF AUGUST, 2019

Protocols

I am very delighted to be here with you at this dinner. First, let me especially welcome to Nigeria the Director-General of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Guy Ryder CBE, and all the guests and delegates who have travelled from around the world to attend the Global Youth Employment Forum.

I am told that we have young people from more than 60 countries of the world here in Abuja, and that you have spent the last two days in very interesting and inspiring conversation and debate about the place of young people in the world in the 21^st century, the challenges that stand in their way, and innovative ideas and solutions to confront those challenges.

All of this is very heartwarming, and I wish you the very best as you conclude work on the roadmap that I’m told will be produced from this Forum.

Governments around the world must continue to strive for ways to harness the innate entrepreneurial energy of our young people and their propensity for creativity, especially ICT-enabled creativity. We have a responsibility to constantly rethink old ways of doing things; from delivering education and healthcare, to democratizing access to financial services, to giving young people greater agency in political and civic spaces.

A lot of the change required will not be incremental, will not be modest tweaks to existing models and systems; instead, it will require radical, disruptive thinking; abandoning dated ideas and showing the confidence to welcome and implement new ones – and learn quickly from failure if or when it happens.

Let me say that we are indeed very pleased to be hosting this year’s Forum. You could not have chosen a more appropriate setting for the Forum – Nigeria is not only home to one of the youngest populations in the world, it also has more young people than all but a handful of countries.

These young people are our greatest assets. There is no doubt about that. In entrepreneurship, entertainment, sports, literature, technology, and other fields, our young people have always confidently demonstrated their talent and potential.

Barely 24 hours ago, we were celebrating Micro, Small and Medium enterprises from all across Nigeria. A good number of the prize winners were young people, all of them doing very interesting things and pushing the boundaries of innovation in business. Also, yesterday in Edo State, we graduated the first set of trainees in the Animation Industry and the Creative Sector

Globally, animation & VFX are used widely in many areas like TV, films, Games, adverts, medicine, training and education, e-learning, legal and insurance, 3D visualization, architecture, and the list goes on. Animation is labour-intensive and requires very high skill levels, and is also lucrative for businesses and the workforce. We envisioned the N-Power Creative training to stimulate the development of creative and technological skills in young Nigerians in a studio environment- with 2D and 3D animation, storyboarding, illustration, scriptwriting, voice acting and post-production skills.

In its first year, the programme will train a total of 3,000 young Nigerians. 1,500 young Nigerians from the South West, South-South and South East were in Benin for the past 4 weeks learning these creative skills. Another 1,500 from the North East, North West and North Central will soon commence a similar exercise.

This training also encompasses a practical phase where each of the trainees across the various streams is organized into a studio and gets to work together, as a typical studio would. Scriptwriters, storyboard artists, voice actors, animators and post-production artists will collaborate as studio teams and go on to produce educational and entertainment content. The idea is that some will end up as entrepreneurs from the next phase, while others will be absorbed by the industry. This is why we are not only building capacity; we are also investing in the basic tools that will be needed – a computer and the relevant software that will get the new trainees active and productive.

Importantly, we set up a Technology and Creativity Advisory Group as part of the Federal Government of Nigeria’s active support for innovation, with a specific focus on engaging with young entrepreneurs, investing in supporting infrastructure, and enabling an environment that is conducive to business and investment. This has proven to be very useful.

As an example, there are a lot of companies today involved in FinTech, and all manner of payment systems. They are not banks, but they are doing a lot of incredible work, and there are a lot of turnovers in their businesses. Because they are not banks, the Central Bank wants to regulate them almost as if they are banks. With the benefits of the young men and women who work with me in the advisory group, we were able to design strategies and ideas for the Central Bank to be able to license this category of financial technology companies, making it easier to do business.

The environment is so dynamic and things are changing so quickly that even a lot of our policies are becoming outdated, and we need to move along with some of the changes that we are seeing, especially with some of the disruptive ideas we are seeing all across the country, and this, I’m sure, is the same all over the world.

We are therefore partnering with the African Development Bank to set up an Innovation Fund that will fund and nurture ideas and innovation from hubs and educational institutions. The Fund will also support skills development, rollout infrastructure, and support the establishment of Technology and Creativity Parks, among other things.

Already, as part of our Social Investment Programmes, we have worked with private sector players to establish Innovation Hubs and support existing ones in the six regions of Nigeria.

The Hub in Lagos, developed in partnership with the World Bank and the Lagos Business School, is focused on Climate Innovation, while the Yola Hub, in Northeastern Nigeria, is focused on humanitarian innovation. Its interns are using technologies such as 3-D printing to provide prosthetic limbs for amputees, and using Virtual Reality to tell neglected yet important stories of resilience and triumph in the face of the Boko Haram insurgency. One of those VR stories, titled “Daughters of Chibok”, produced by a young Nigerian, Joel Benson, will be featured at the Venice Film Festival in Italy later this month.

I thank you for listening. God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.