Etisalat Nigeria has said that to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda of the United Nations, access to education, health and security is key for Nigeria considering that the country has a very youthful population.
This was the position of the company at the recently held thought leadership breakfast series, Sustainable Conversation, put together by Thistle Praxis Consulting in partnership with Etisalat which was held at the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
According to the Vice President, Regulatory and Corporate Affairs, Etisalat Nigeria, Ibrahim Dikko, while speaking at the event said that the SDGs are lofty and ambitious targets. “I think the way around this is for countries to look for what is the most critical for them. Each country has its own priorities. We have to focus on issues like education, health, security, peace and justice, access to facilities, etc. That is not to say we should ignore the other goals and just focus on these. We should prioritize and start with what is achievable in the immediate.”
He assured that Etisalat is committed to strengthening partnerships with governments and their agencies towards achieving the development goals. He disclosed that the company is leading a quiet revolution in providing telecommunications-focused education with training of students and lecturers in that field.
“When we started operations in 2008, we realized that in our Universities, what was obtainable were programmes like petroleum, electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering, but there was none on telecommunications engineering.
In the 21st century, there is no way we can go forward and build capacity if we did not try and address that. So we started a partnership with ABU, Zaria to sponsor students to Masters Degree programmes in telecommunications engineering in the, UK and at the Etisalat Academy, UAE. We are also training some lecturers at PhD level so there can be capacity for knowledge sharing,” he said.
