Digital Skills Acquisition: Panacea to Unemployment in Nigeria

Abstract

Unemployment is a growing menace that requires urgent and decisive actions by all stakeholders. Advancement in the ICT sector has created rapid changes which continually shape the way work is done in modern workplaces. The concerns are the need for Nigeria's employable populace to acquire the requisite digital and high-income skills required for effective functioning in the fourth industrial revolution. Against this backdrop, the study explored the potential of digital skills to remedy the lingering scourge of unemployment in Nigeria. The study examined the impact of technological change on modern society, the degree of unemployment in Nigeria, digital footprints, and viable digitally-enabled opportunities for tackling the menace of unemployment in Nigeria. The paper also explicated the possible and workable ways digital skills can be leveraged as an important tool for empowering, reskilling, and upskilling, and for the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) of the Nigerian youth-force to meet the growing digital skills demand in the fast growing digital economy.