By June Ifebe.
The National Economic Council (NEC) in 2018 initiated the National Human Capital Development Programme to address poverty and ensure sustainable economic growth which is critical to Human Capital Development (HCD). The HCD Programme is an effort to accelerate more and better-streamlined investments in people for equitable and economic growth in Nigeria.
In its first iteration, Nigeria’s Human Capital Programme (HCD 1.0) set clear targets and commitments for investment priorities, accelerating investments in human capital, and expanding stakeholder support to drive outcomes in Health, Education, and Labour Force participation in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030. The vision has set clear plans and targets across these three thematic areas with six critical outcome areas and sixteen high-impact Interventions. For example, the programme will support the States to launch free family planning programmes, recruit, and train health workers, improve child education, teacher development programmes and access to job market information, among others.
State Governors have championed the HCD agenda at the sub-national level, demonstrating strong political leadership and commitment to accelerate poverty eradication and improve the overall quality of life of their people. This has been demonstrated in the constitution of State HCD Councils, chaired by Deputy Governors, with Commissioners of key thematic areas as members, appointing a Focal Person to drive the technical objectives of the state priorities.
To sustain the momentum, the new Administration, through the National Economic Council (NEC) and the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), is inaugurating the Core Working Group (CWG) comprising of the NGF, Office of the Vice President, thematic Ministries, development partners and the private sector to accelerate the efforts of the next phase of the HCD programme – the HCD 2.0 (2024 - 2027). The CWG will continue to leverage the convening power of the NGF and NEC to promote human capital policy reforms, actions, and innovations that accelerate more and better investments at the sub-national level. We are reassessing and designing a comprehensive roadmap for the HCD programme going forward to ensure that the programme activities align with the overall HCD agenda.
In launching HCD 2.0, the CWG will redesign a strategy aimed at improving implementations and the overall governance and funding structure to ensure programme sustainability and continuity independent of the political landscape. Ms. Rukaiya El-Rufai, the Special Adviser on National Economic Council (NEC) and Climate Change, will coordinate the HCD 2.0 efforts.
States are eager to recommit to HCD 2.0 and work with the CWG to ensure the roadmap is achieved through a co-development and co-creation process. In this phase of engagements and advocacy, States are expected to realize their State-specific HCD plans and targets, build their HCI and data strengths, access available funding and receive technical support that accelerates investment in their people. The CWG team will identify a few States and begin its advocacy visits for these engagements to reaffirm its commitment to ensuring proper implementation of Human Capital at the subnational level.
The Core Working Group will continue to leverage relationships, working closely with governments, development partners, the private sector, civil society organizations, and other key stakeholders to achieve development goals that accelerate Human Capital in Nigeria.