ABSTRACT
The crises of youth unemployment has been alarming over the years in Edo State. In effort to curb the menace, various strategies have been developed to engage the teeming youth into the sole agenda of self-employment through skillsets. One of such strategy is the inclusion of Information communication technology (ICT) packages geared towards employment generation. The study therefore examined Information and Communication Technology: as a strategy to curb youth unemployment in Edo State using Esan West Local Government Area as a case study. The main objectives of the study were; to examine the extent ICT networking and programming skill can help to address youth unemployment; to evaluate the extent ICT technical support and sales can be used to solve youth unemployment crises; to examine the challenges facing ICT; to suggest possible ways in which ICT can be made more effective. To explore these objectives, four research questions were posed. The study was anchored on ICT ecosystem theory and Schumpeter’s innovation theory of unemployment as its theoretical guide. These theories shows that innovation in ICT sector has brought about job creation. Descriptive survey method was used to carry out the study, while primary and secondary data was used for the research. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire which has two section. The First section was the personal data of the respondents, while the second section was divided into four parts, which focused on unemployment, ICT training, challenges and suggested solutions, which were the study objectives. The population of the study was the entire youth in Esan West Local Government Area, from which the respondents consisting of 280 were drawn from the ten (10) political wards through a simple random sampling technique. The primary data was collected through the questionnaire, and analysed using simple percentage to determine the opinion of the respondents on the study objectives. The findings from the analysed questionnaire showed that there is a high rate of unemployment among the youths in Esan West Local Government Area Edo State. The study also found that ICT packages such as; programming, networking and technical support skills has brought about job creation. Through the findings, the challenges that beset ICT as it relates to; lack of training centres, inadequate training equipment, and absence of financial grant for trainees among others were identified. Based on the findings, the research recommends amongst others; the need to ensure interest in ICT skills are nurtured through its inclusion from basic to tertiary level of academic curriculum; the need to provide and equip ICT training centres, as well as retain experts to train the youth on their desired skill; the need to provide access to loans, ICT equipment, and a platform where those with advanced ICT skills can sought for job away from their communities. The study concludes that though beset with challenges, ICT has full capacity to curb unemployment among youth, and it should therefore be given attention by the government to ensure it thrive.
