Rural Talent and Emerging ABI Talent Scout Playbook in Nigeria for Sustainable Growth

It has emerged once again that Nigerian government and concerned stakeholders in youth development and human capacity building need to reinvent the playbook being used for scouting  and nurturing talented youths in the country. This is essential as most professionals, who reacted and commented on a video that shows a demonstration of a motorbike invented by a young boy in the southern region of the country, want the youths to contribute to the growth and development in a conducive and sustainable environment. The viral video was posted by Professor Ndubuisi Ekekwe, the Nigerian-US based entrepreneur, on his LinkedIn page.

Examination of the reactions and comments by our analyst indicates that Nigerian professionals want rural talents to be found and nurtured using ABI Playbook [created by our analyst from the reactions and comments after modeling the trends in the reactions and comments]. According to our analyst, ABI Playbook encompasses identification of the talented youths and others in the rural areas across the country by individuals and communicating such youths to the world through new media, especially YouTube. The Playbook also entails an appropriate response from the government authorities to the need of the youths without compromising ability to give them the needed resources, most importantly placing them in domains where their ideas and creativity would be further enhanced. Our analyst also notes that the Playbook would be incomplete without the support of individuals and businesses.

From the views of the professionals, our analyst discovered that Nigeria has many talents who can transform the country’s economy in many aspects. To them, potentials of the talented youths have remained untapped effectively over the years due to limited support from the government, individuals and businesses. Where support is initiated, check reveals that it has largely been done for those with entertainment artistry than those in technical fields or sectors.