Early Code Partners With IDEAS-TVET To Empower Nigerian Youths in the Digital Economy

Tochukwu Joshua Ozo-Osiedo - Published July 27, 2026

Nigeria is one of the youngest populous countries globally; hence the name “ the giant of Africa”. With the increasing population, there should be an increase in educational and financial elevation amongst citizens; sadly, this is not so. There is a wide struggle to keep these elevations, facilitate adequate and accessible education, and provide skill acquisition training to meet current industry demands. The pace of various industries keeps evolving, but the experience and skills to keep up are lacking.

Realistically, the target audience, youths, are underempowered, and the estimation of employment grows by 15% yearly.

The Evolving Global Capital and National Mission of IDEAS-TVET

The Innovation Development and Effectiveness in the Acquisition of Skills(IDEAS-TVET) initiative is a World Bank-backed project by the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Education targeted at tackling youth unemployment. The initiative provides 100% free, intensive training for a stipulated duration of months, and the participants receive essential start-up tools to become entrepreneurs or gain meaningful employment through internship and job placement schemes.

This initiative primarily focuses on the high-demand and growing technical sectors. These sectors include:

• Clean and Green Energy
• Digital and ICT Services
• Modern Agriculture
• Technical Trades and Engineering

IDEAS-TVET provides these opportunities to youths from the age of 15 to 35 and partners with endorsed Training Service Providers (TSPs) to facilitate quality training in any of the sectors mentioned above.

They solve the paradox of unemployed Nigerian youths by making sure these TSPs effectively strategize the training to enhance the vocational and educational capacity of the youths, ready to produce the industry-relevant skills needed to thrive and improve daily living.

This particular skill was chosen because the creative sector is the largest employer in Nigeria after agriculture. Nigeria's creative sector contributed approximately $1.8 billion to the GDP in 2020, and the numbers keep growing by the year.

From a gaming market projected to reach $176 million by 2023 to a creative sector expected to create 2.7 million jobs by 2025, Nigeria's digital-first pipeline is turning screen time into real income.

The demand for creatives in photography, video production, and social media management is growing rapidly across all industries, businesses, brands, and organizations, and they help boost physical visibility and engage the audience across online platforms.

This TSP, Early Code Instuitute, is successfully training 75 students, maintaining an even gender distribution of the target audience, and has assembled a diverse group of industry experts as instructors to teach different modules at zero direct cost to these participants.

These creative digital skills can open opportunities in:

• Freelancing
• IT Placement
• Content creation
• Brand management
• Entrepreneurship
• Digital marketing

Inside the Cohort of Creative Media Production

Under the Digital and ICT sector, Creative Media Production is a 6-month training designed to prepare Nigerian youths for Photography, Video Production, Graphic Design, and Social Media Management opportunities in the growing creative industry. You can learn more about specialized tracks like our Cybersecurity Scholarship Program or view Private Virtual Classes.

Through hands-on training in these modules, the participants are expected to gain real-world experience and practical knowledge that prepares them for the digital economy today, in a beginner-friendly learning environment.

Each module comprises fieldwork for practical knowledge, editing and engineering software for technical knowledge, and theoretical knowledge of the general digital context. They include:

• Basic computer knowledge: to effectively operate software, manage digital files, collaborate remotely, and transition ideas into creative content. The key software taught is Microsoft Office: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
• Photography: for the visual representation of brand identities and designs. The software tools taught for photo editing include Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop.
• Video production: to capture dynamic visuals and audio.
• Graphic Design: to improve storytelling and make sure branding is engaging and professionally polished through CorelDRAW.
• Social Media Management: to monetize the audience through digital content strategies.
• Entrepreneurship: to bridge the gap between practical education and market success by building sustainable revenue streams from photo and video content. This module teaches participants how to turn their creative portfolio, gathered through the period of training, into a business.

Translating Continuous performance evaluation into quality progress

The comprehensive curriculum was designed to empower participants with skills and knowledge across different levels in creative media: Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. To make sure the monetary value of training 85 + students yields the educational purpose of investment, IDEAS-TVET and Early Code Institute implemented a continuous periodic monitory assessment and evaluation system.

The system involves 80% compliance through attendance, assessment through unit assignments that require evidence carried out by the participant, and frequent portfolio audits by certified assessors.

Through this data-driven system, students' performance is being tracked to achieve the end-game, which is industry competency and high standards set down by National Skill Acquisition (NSQ), the Federal Ministry of Education, and the World Bank.

The students also perform real-world practical sessions such as holding Photography and Video Production sessions for external clients. These sessions are held to expose participants early to real-world client management, creative inspirations, and communication workflow in a professional setting.

Securing a successful internship and employment for students

The true goal of the IDEAS-TVET program partnership with Early Code Institute is to provide a sustainable plan to empower youths through an internship that leads to job opportunities or individual plans for empowerment through entrepreneurship.

After class, these participants enter the aggressive market space comfortably with two acquired assets:

1. A verifiable certificate endorsed to prove their technical and practical abilities to any employer.
2. A diverse and rich accumulation of real-world designs, photography, and video asset portfolios over the period of training to prove capability to take on a role in the creative industry or start a sustainable business that grows over time.

The various career paths that can be explored after this training are:

• Freelancing
• Content design, creation, and implementation
• Brand design and management
• Entrepreneurship
• Digital Marketing
• Social Media Management

The initiative to train and empower trainees in Creative Media Production is tied directly to Early Code Institute extensive placement scheme designed to transform these participants into stable jobs in Digital Marketing.

While Nigeria's future isn't just being written or painted, it is being coded, streamed, and gamified by a restless generation whose phones are their studios, whose side hustles are going global, and whose collective typing is building a digital empire from the ground up. This is what makes the transformation easier to achieve.

By infusing these participants after training into professional creative businesses, enterprises, freelance networks, and production studios, the project exposes and secures these 75 trainees to thrive and excel in Nigeria's creative economy and even Africa at large.