q.dart 💙

I should be helping @DrTunjiAlausa give shout-outs for the Federal Government’s partnership with Coursera and Pluralsight?? I actually think getting more Nigerians access to digital skills is a good thing. But I also have to say this: We’ve been building AltSchool brick by brick here in Nigeria, hiring Nigerians, building infrastructure here, training Nigerians, and contributing to the Nigerian economy. And then my own Federal Government goes outside Nigeria to partner with US companies to provide many of the same skills we already provide here to Nigerians. The Digital Training Academy is a six-month programme targeting 32,000 Nigerians, with training delivered through Coursera and Pluralsight. I genuinely believe AltSchool could have delivered significantly more value for a fraction of the cost. With AltSchool, we could provide live classes, dedicated mentors, structured learning, diploma certificates that students can use as part of pathways towards further education in and outside Nigeria, and job support. And beyond AltSchool, my bigger concern is this: At what point do we deliberately start looking inward when Nigerian companies have already built the capacity to solve the problem? Global partnerships are important. We should learn from the best companies in the world and work with them where it makes sense, but Nigerian companies also need Nigerian institutions to believe in them. Because every time we spend locally, we’re not only training the beneficiaries. We’re strengthening Nigerian companies, creating jobs, building local infrastructure, developing intellectual property, and increasing the capacity of our own ecosystem. I want to see more Nigerians get access to quality education, so I genuinely hope the Digital Training Academy succeeds. I just also hope that the next time we want to make an investment of this scale in Nigerian talent, Nigerian education companies are invited to the table too. The right approach would have been making both local and global companies partner to deliver this training, but it is what it is.