When describing an emerging market like Nigeria, one positive indicator is the large youth population. Nigeria boasts a median age of 17 years. Despite this, high unemployment rates plague the country, especially the youth. As of Q4 2020, unemployment was 33.3%; amongst the youth between the ages of 15 and 25, in Q4 2020, 38.5% were unemployed. 

Following the National Bureau of Statistics’ alignment with international standards defining employment prescribed by the International Labour Organisation, unemployment dropped to 5.4% in Q4 2022 and 4.1% in Q1 2023. With strong macroeconomic headwinds, addressing employability is one of the challenges for Nigeria’s Government and other developmental organisations.

Amidst this spiking unemployment amongst the youthful population, our 2021 work on the platform economy focused on platform livelihoods, considering factors such as livelihood type (work/sales), geography (local/ global), and work location (location-based/online), specifically focusing on women and intersectionality like disability.

We explored “Platform Livelihoods and Young Women’s Economic Empowerment in Nigeria” to understand how platforms could bridge the employment gap, especially for women working and selling online. We learned that 1) the operating context of digital platforms matters, 2) flexibility is a myth, 3) platform workers want protections, 4) presence is not enough, and 5) platforms mimic the real world. Cross-cutting across platform work and sales, digital skills are needed to promote products and services, enhance worker visibility, etc. In addition, the COVID-19 impact on work necessitates new (digital) skills and competencies beyond the platform economy to the broader digital economy. 

Within the context of Nigeria’s Digital Economy Policy and Strategy 2020-2030, the digital economy provides invaluable opportunities for economic growth and job creation, particularly for young people. Against this backdrop and clarion calls for new (digital) skills development, in 2023, we sought to build on our Platform Livelihoods work to understand how to enhance young women’s empowerment by building their digital skills and assessing scalable development models. With this workstream focusing on the policy, we developed a paper, Gendered Skilling in Nigeria’s Digital Economy: Implications for Female Platform Workers, underscoring the interplay of digital platforms, skills, and employability for Nigerian women and girls.

Using the Gender@Work framework, the summary of gendered skilling barriers is illustrated (see Figure 1) across systemic/individual and formal/informal dimensions. It highlights the efforts required by government agencies, digital skill providers, society and its communities, and women learners.

In addition, we learned that 1) there is a supply-demand gap amongst the digital skills stakeholders across the typology of skills, and 2) scale delimiting factors of digital skills providers include delivery models, funding, and digital resource access, recommending that:

• Digital ecosystem stakeholders should strengthen partnerships to enhance the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) system.
• To incentivise adoption at scale, gendered digital skills suppliers should complement training with more labour opportunities, especially at the basic to intermediate skill levels. This proposition will require a comprehensive and coherent institutional and policy framework that supports equitable livelihoods for women in emerging forms of work, such as online work, crowd work, and other types of virtual work.
• Digital skills suppliers should develop optimal monitoring and evaluation (M&E) frameworks to understand better the impacts of gendered digital skilling policies and training initiatives.

Despite the existence of different policy frameworks promoting the digital economy and gender equality, our policy recommendations include fully implementing existing policy frameworks and actions that 1) address gender bias and discrimination, 2) promote gender-responsive training programmes, 3) enhance digital literacy and access, and 4) strengthen stakeholder collaborations. Alongside these are cross-cutting actions like: 

1. Creating learning/skill development centres that offer affordable digital training programs and access to computers and the Internet. These centres should be easily accessible (in rural and urban communities) and provide a safe and supportive environment for women to acquire digital skills and advance their careers in the tech sector. 
2. Fostering public-public and public-private partnerships with governmental and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the private sector and civil society, including development organisations, to support gender equality and implement and fund digital literacy initiatives for women and girls. These collaborations can leverage expertise and resources, expanding the reach and impact of the programmes.
3. The National Orientation Agency (NOA) should design and launch nationwide awareness campaigns to challenge existing gender norms and stereotypes, emphasising the importance of equal opportunities and promoting gender equality in the digital economy. In addition, national campaigns should promote the importance of digital literacy for women and girls, emphasising its role in economic empowerment, education, and social inclusion. These campaigns should also address cultural barriers and stereotypes discouraging women and girls from pursuing digital literacy.

Fast forward to 2024; initiatives like the 3 Million Technical Talent Program (3MTT) of the Federal Ministry of Innovation, Communication and Digital Economy introduced in 2023 reinforce these recommendations. Nigeria’s progression in her digital journey and intention to create employment opportunities abounds with the right digital skills. Thus, creating a sustainable digital economy requires intentional tactics across the ecosystem that provide platform work and sales options and building supply- and demand-side skills. 

Professor Olayinka David-West is  Associate Dean at the Lagos Business School (LBS), the premier business school in Nigeria, and sits on the school’s Management Board. She leads the Sustainable and Inclusive Digital Financial Services (SIDFS) initiative, a research and advocacy initiative dedicated to enhancing financial inclusion in Nigeria.