The Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Sustainable Development Goals will collaborate with the German Development Cooperation (GDC) to reduce poverty and unemployment in Nigeria.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on SDGs Princess Adejoke Orelope Adefulire made this known while hosting the Country Director, German Development Cooperation, Mr. Thomas Kirsch.
She commended the German Development Cooperation for their long relationship with Nigeria and for building skills acquisition centres in Ogun and Plateau States, pointing out that, these have helped a lot in training our teaming unemployed youth, making them employers of labuor thereby contributing greatly to the socio-economic development of Nigeria.
She requested that, the German Development Cooperation should consider opening other mega vocational acquisition centres to enable train youth in the areas of carpentry, plumbing, welding, building etc, in Lagos, Kano and Kaduna States, considering the high population rates and commercial activities that thrive there. Doing so she said, will take a lot of youth out of the streets and create more jobs and reduce social ills in the society.
Mrs Adejoke said that, the Government of President Buhari is working hard in Agricultural sector and is encouraging Nigerians to go into farming of Cocoa, Groundnut, Cassava, Rice, and Vegetables. She appealed to the German Development Cooperation to facilitate some of these projects in the area of capacity building to complement Government efforts.
Earlier, the Country Director, GDC, Dr. Thomas Kirsch said, their visit are to update the SSAP-SDGs on the organization’s activities to enable them collaborate on future activities, pointing out that, the organization is in over 70 countries worldwide in the regions of Asia, Central-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Latin America the Caribbean, Middle East, the Mediterranean region and sub-Saharan Africa.
He stressed that, in Nigeria they have established some vocational centres in Ogun and Plateau States where youth are being trained in various fields.
The priority of the organization, he said, are to fight poverty, promoting renewable energy and efficiency, food security, good governance, social security amongst others.
In Nigeria, he said, their main priority is to support Nigerian Government using SDGs platform in order to create jobs in long terms through the vocational training programmes among others. He stated that, in 2016 about a hundred thousand farmers benefited from their programme in Cocoa and Cassava value chains through the Federal Ministry of Agriculture.
He added that, their activities are all linked to the achievement of SDGs target, hence, the need to collaborate and fight poverty.
