Nigeria_Skills Development for Youth Employment (SKYE)

As a consequence of the long-standing focus on the capital-intensive mineral sector, which affords comparatively few job opportunities, Nigeria has neglected employment-intensive sectors, such as construction and agriculture. 

This affects youth and young adults in particular. Due to the precarious employment and income prospects, internal migration from rural areas to urban centres is on the rise, but so is migration abroad, particularly to the European Union. At the same time, entrepreneurs complain of a shortage of well-qualified specialists and workers, with the result that vacancies cannot be filled. A major reason for this lies in the poor quality of curricula, teacher training and equipment in the TVET/educational system.

The SKYE project is aimed at improving employment and income opportunities for Nigerian young people. To achieve this, the project follows an integrated approach to employment promotion. Measures on the supply side of the labour market (promotion of vocational training) are combined with measures on the demand side (development of the private sector, especially micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, MSMEs) and with interventions in the area of employment services (job placement / matching, career counselling / guidance and labour market information). The project focuses on employment-intensive sectors (f.i. construction and agriculture).
By improving employability for dependent or self-employment, while promoting a favourable environment for the creation of new jobs in labour-intensive sectors and supporting the matching of labour supply and demand, the project – together with the other SEDEC projects - aims to impact on the short and long-term employment and income prospects of the target groups. The project addresses i) short-term training, employment and income opportunities for young people and ii) the structural levers for the longer-term creation of employability, employment and income in Nigeria.

Overall responsibility for the Team Leader

Ensuring the coherence and complementarity of the services of the contractor with other services delivered by the project at local and national level:

• Overall oversight over strategy, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of capacity development measures for local partners in the following areas:
• Development of National Occupational Standards, corresponding curricula, teaching and learning materials for selected agriculture sector stakeholders
• Planning, designing, monitoring and evaluating active labour market policies and measures; including conducting surveys and analyses of labour market information.
• ICT-based employment and skills promotion campaigns, information dissemination and monitoring of outreach.
• Consideration of cross-cutting themes (e.g. gender equality)
• Personnel management, in particular identifying the need for short-term assignments within the available budget, as well as planning and steering assignments and supporting local and international short-term experts
• Ensuring results monitoring is conducted, and fed into the SKYE overall monitoring and evaluation system
• Regular reporting in accordance with deadlines
• Responsibility for controlling the use of funds and financial planning in consultation with GIZ’s officer responsible for the commission
• Supporting the officer responsible for the commission in updating/adapting the project strategy, in evaluations and in preparing a follow-on phase