What Nigeria Must Do To Stop Mass Migration Of Youths — AfDB President

The President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Akinwumi Adesina, has urged African leaders to provide jobs for the teeming unemployed youths to stop the mass migration in the country.

Adesina stated this in Abuja on Friday at the second Veritas University Digital Innovations Exhibition and 12th convocation lecture

He lamented that Nigeria is losing its best brains to Japa syndrome.

The former minister of Agriculture who spoke on the convocation lecture theme “Africa, It’s Your Time”, also tasked Nigeria to turn its huge youth demography into an asset and not a liability.

He announced that Nigeria has been listed among 10 other African countries to benefit from the Bank’s $20 billion Desert-to-Power initiative.

He noted that the power project was conceived to develop 10 GW of solar power, being the largest solar zone in the world when completed.

Adesina listed other countries to benefit from the initiative as Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, the Gambia, Guinea, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Eritrea, and Senegal.

He said, “What Africa lacks is not money. What Africa lacks is a lack of bankable ideas. Remember, money will always follow great ideas.

“As you join the workforce, technology and Artificial Intelligence will play a big role in your lives and your enterprises.

“I expect to see many of you provide creative solutions to many of our challenges through analytics and data aggregation. There are huge opportunities in the smart and digital economies of the future.

“All this matters to me personally because I do not want to see the continued exodus of young people who risk their lives to dangerously cross land and sea to go to Europe at all costs.

“The fastest way for Nigeria to dramatically expand the wealth of its economy, create jobs and provide decent work opportunity for its youth is to implement bold, effort-oriented, industrial manufacturing actions.”