The Consortium of Nigerian New Media Professionals in Abuja on Saturday referred to as on youths to harness the brand new frontiers of the inventive economic system to safe international worth and create employment for themselves.
Additionally they referred to as on President Bola Tinubu to strengthen the economic system of the nation’s creation as a strategic answer to alleviate rising unemployment in Nigeria.
The enchantment got here on Saturday throughout the Digital Join convention organized by Younger Folks Join Africa to debate methods to stimulate digital entrepreneurship and innovation to sort out the unemployment disaster.
In its checklist of youth unemployment in 20 nations launched final April, The Spectator Index, a worldwide youth unemployment indicator, put Nigeria’s unemployment price at 53 p.c, the second highest youth unemployment price on the earth after South Africa’s 61 p.c.
“Our focus has been totally on the person and what the citizen can do themselves, which is to see new media as a precedence,” Lagos-based new media guide and founding father of the enterprise neighborhood HeadStart Africa, John Obidi, stated on Saturday.
Talking on the theme ‘Hacking the Creator Economic system’, Obidi argued that being inventive and hardworking, Nigerians can export greater than music and artwork to the remainder of the world after they faucet into the rising creator economic system.
He stated, “There was a time when it was assumed that anybody who was good at expertise would come from India. And that was a necessity as a result of actuality of their time. Now we too are confronted with this actuality.
“Nigeria has a lot inventive expertise. Nigeria is Africa in relation to creativity and music. Africa appears as much as Nigeria.
“Along with leisure, an increasing number of younger folks can get up to the chances within the new media area. The truth that you might be from Nigeria doesn’t imply that your market is essentially Nigeria. And that is why the worldwide economic system is such a ravishing factor: you could be right here in Nigeria and change worth with somebody in Asia and get worth again.”
For Julius Afolabi, the chief director of the Calabar-based College of Enterprise and Careers, the Tinubu administration should spend money on digital infrastructure to create a prototype setting that forestalls mind drain.
“Nigerians have uncooked information wherever on the earth. Nigerians are a inventive and clever bunch of individuals. Nonetheless, poor infrastructure was a problem. How will we struggle this? Let’s create a prototype setting. So a credit score prototype setting so that individuals do not have to depart the nation,” he stated.
In the meantime, content material creator and social media influencer Salem King stated Nigeria’s web penetration price of 40.72 p.c leaves so many tales untold.
He concluded that the worldwide acceptance Nigerian music now enjoys could be boosted via authorities funding within the inventive economic system.
“Social media is without doubt one of the largest methods for progress and actually creating worth and constructing wholesome communities.
“There is a sure demand for our tradition that we have seen on the earth’s acceptance of our music and films. And I imagine the following space the place we will begin to see that progress is with content material.
“So when authorities insurance policies permit entry to extra digital and inventive sources, extra tales will come out of Nigeria. We are able to even enhance worldwide demand for our tradition,” King stated.
On his half, the convener of the convention and lead strategist at YPCA, Joseph Etim, lamented that constructive Nigerian tales are usually not being informed sufficient. He stated that the unfavourable notion of the nation in numerous elements of the world could be corrected by correct use of social media.
Etim famous, “Younger Nigerians should come to phrases with the truth that their tales create the world’s notion of them.
“The higher tales we put out, the extra we are able to appropriate these perceptions. Younger folks have to focus extra on telling the precise tales as a result of the world will at all times inform its personal story. Now it is as much as us to inform our personal.”