Our Reporter

The Chief Executive Officer of Connecting Lagos, Idris Aregbe, has urged the government to look for homegrown strategies to resolve the economic challenges caused by the COVID-19.

Aregbe, who is also the founder of Culturati, recommended the entrenchment of cultural values, transparency, accountability, trustworthiness as part of the solutions.

He argued that Nigeria, like other African countries, could build a strong and effective economy but must ensure that it was based on its homegrown cultural values that had attracted the world to the continent earlier.

The Culturati boss in a statement said homegrown strategies could reduce the unemployment rate.

He said: “To improve its economies, the culture of good governance cannot be seen as a distant luxury, to be aspired but avoided in practice. In order to, not just boost economic development but sustain such, the all-important cultural values must be in place and must be governed by transparency, accountability, trustworthiness and empowerment.

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“Each individual African country can build its own economy based on its home-grown cultural values. The successes of African films (Nollywood) and African music are instructive.”

Aregbe, suggested that innovative, entrepreneurial and forward-looking people should be engaged to raise awareness on the need for education, for a change in negative attitudes and values, in the drive to boost economic development.

As support for the government, he said Culturati had expanded its reach and has established an academy that would reduce the Coronavirus threat on the country’s economy.

The academy, he said, was designed to assist the government to reduce the unemployment rate.

According to him, the academy was conceived to redeem the time by turning people’s passion into profit and open the African cultural market to the world.

“In the light of this, augmented by the negative ripple effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become necessary to look inwards in finding new ways of creating value and stemming the tide of its effects as we look ahead in optimism towards a post-pandemic economy; a logic that informed the launch of Culturati academy,” he said.

He listed free courses offered by the academy to include Photography, Catering, videography, Hair-Dressing, Fashion, Designing, Arts and Crafts, Modelling, Painting, Dancing, Acting, Make-up, Script-writing, Business Management.

The Connecting Lagos boss noted that the initiative “complements the intervention of the Ministry of Wealth Creation and Employment to tackle unemployment, promote job creation, entrepreneurship and skill development.”.