Posted Tue, Jul 16, 2019 8:00 AM

Growing an Inclusive Economy: Job Creation and Nigeria’s Future

Nigeria has a major unemployment crisis. The country’s rapidly growing population, increasing entrants into the labour market each year as well as the limited number of new jobs created present a key concern for both policy makers and the business community on the future of work for the vibrant young population.

Within the last five years, 3.3 million people entered into the labor market seeking for jobs. This figure increased to 4.8 million from 2015 to 2018, a lot of whom are young people. Going by this trend, the NESG estimates that over 100 million jobs will need to be created from 2019 to 2050 to maintain the unemployment rate at 23%. But where will these jobs come from?

Unfortunately, the current pace of job creation in the private sector cannot match with the expansion in the labour force. The government must embark on reforms to ensure sectoral expansion, ease business regulations, provide investment incentives and ensure massive infrastructure development.

The government must also identify new opportunity areas and pursue diversification and value-chain development across key economic sectors such as Agriculture, Manufacturing and Construction. The government needs to support structural transformation by identifying and removing the constraints limiting competitiveness in these industries.

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