VIENNA, 12 October 2017 – A new curricula focusing on entrepreneurship will now have a place in secondary schools in Nigeria. It was designed with the support of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and funded by the Government of Japan.

The first phase of the project ended successfully at the end of September. The new curricula on entrepreneurship will be implemented in 27 pilot senior secondary schools in nine states across the country  next year. After analyzing the results of this exercise, the curriculum will be further updated and rolled out in the rest of the country’s senior secondary schools. Once nationally rolled-out, 4.5 million secondary school students will be benefit from the programme in any given school year.

The newly developed 34 trade subjects in this project were approved by the National Council of Education of Nigeria in a meeting held from 24 to 28 July. Mallam Adamu Adamu, the Federal Minister of Education, said that Nigeria was now geared towards offering “functional education that propels a nation on the path of progress and development”. By enhancing the entrepreneurship contents of senior secondary education, the revised curricula will support the country’s national industrialization strategy.

In 2009, the Federal Government unveiled a national development plan called “Vision 20:2020” which aims to catapult Nigeria into the league of the first 20 industrialized nations by the year 2020. In order to achieve this goal, Nigeria is working towards the effective integration of young people into productive activities through enhanced education and vocational training, along with strengthened support for public-private partnerships in the education sector.

Since 2012, UNIDO’s project has supported the development of the entrepreneurship curriculum by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC). The project also helped prepare guidelines for teachers and a range of monitoring and evaluation tools, and developed the human resource capacity of the NERDC.

For more information, please contact:
Noriko Takahashi
UNIDO Industrial Development Officer