The Nigerian Institution of Mechanical Engineers (NImechE) has called for the training of young engineers to enable Nigeria benefit more from the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AFCTA) in 2021.
The Chairman of the institution, Mohammed Ndaliman, made the call in Abuja at the grand finale of its design and creativity challenge project, organised for young Nigerian engineers.
Tagged “Forging Africa’s Future Mechanical Engineers (FAFME)”, the project is jointly funded by Royal Academy, United Kingdom and Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) to boost the capacity of young mechanical engineering students and graduates.
The first commercial deal of AFCFTA will take off on January 1, 2021 but it is expected to be fully operational by 2030.
“The take-off of AFCTA will require enormous human capacity development and this calls for investment in human capital development to close the huge gap for Nigerian engineers to provide the needed leadership to drive this focused initiative and agenda,” he stated.
Project coordinator of the board/grant awardee, Mrs. Osazoduwa Agboneni, said the programme was aimed at bridging the gap between the classroom and the industry through capacity building, by preparing young engineers to be entrepreneurs.
Agboneni said: “About 43 different projects from different higher institutions in Nigeria were presented. We gave the best 10 funding to come up with a project depending on the cost of such project. Mentors were attached to the participants to guide them and our idea is simply to build them to become entrepreneurs so we will continue to mentor them after the competition”, she stated.
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