The Director General of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), Dr. Matthew Adepoju, has come out to announce its plans to equip 200,000 Nigerian youths with key skills to explore opportunities in the growing space economy.
He recently revealed that there are a lot of opportunities waiting to be explored in the space sector.
Speaking during the 2025 NASRDA top management retreat held in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Adepoju revealed that the skills will not just transform the lives of beneficiaries, they will also go a long way towards addressing the current youth unemployment crisis across Nigeria.
“We are introducing some skills acquisition for youth employment because we have observed that they need skills, wherever you have problems, that is potential money, that is potential jobs, that is opportunities.
But when you don’t have the skills to tackle the problems and turn the situation to wealth creation is the problem.
That’s why we brought up the skills acquisition hub, which is taking off soon,” he said.
For the implementation of the programme, NASRDA is planning to establish skills acquisition hubs across all six geopolitical zones of Nigeria, and the 1st regional centre is set to be commissioned in 2025.
According to him, the training hubs will provide practical, market-ready skills that would empower Nigerian youths to solve problems and contribute their quota to national development.
“The first one out of the six regional centres will be completed and commissioned this year, where we can train up to 200,000 youths every year in every region,” Adepoju said.
He also shared that NASDRA is about to launch 2 new satellites into space within the next year to replace the old satellite launched 14 years ago.
Announcing that the new satellite’s launch is being executed in collaboration with the United States-based Space Exploration and Research Agency (SERA), Matthew stated that the programme of the first Nigerian, first African to be in space would be a reality once it happens.
“In the next six months to one year, definitely, NASRDA will launch at least two out of the four satellites into orbit. Then the programme of the first Nigerian, first African to be in space would have been a reality too, because we have already secured the seat in Blue Origin.
Many of the services rendered to us in Nigeria are substandard. Let’s look at direct-to-home television, even telephone, you are in the middle of a telephone call, and everything is dropping, because of the transponder they are using.
I was really disappointed in the room while I was listening to the President’s acceptance speech, and because it was cloudy and about to rain, everything went off the screen.
It is because nobody is regulating the space sector, which is the function of NASRDA, both the upstream, midstream, and downstream,” he added.
