It is quite a sad situation in Nigeria, the most populated country in Africa, as the unemployment rate among her youths soars. Getting a degree and not knowing what to do with it is becoming a norm in Nigeria. Most parents work hard to sponsor their children to tertiary institutions, but not getting a job or getting a mediocre job has become rampant in Nigerian society. The gap between the haves and have-not is increasing daily, and the Nigerian government has turned a blind eye to it.
Universities and Polytechnics admit over 2 million students per year in Nigeria, and they produce over 600,000 employable graduates yearly. That is also an addition to the number of unemployed youths in the previous years. The unemployment rate keeps skyrocketing year in year out. According to Trading economics, the youth unemployment rate as of December 2020 is 53.40%. That means more than half of the Nigerian Youths are unemployed. And that is different from those that are underemployed, working 20 - 39 hours per week. The report from the Nigerian Youth Employment Action Plan 2021-24 of the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development published in August 2021 indicated that as of 2020 (Q2), 28% of young people are considered underemployed.
The general unemployment rate is now at 33.3 percent, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Doyin Salami, the chairman of the Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC), projected that Nigeria's unemployment rate could increase to 40% before the end of 2021.
Amid this horrible situation facing the youths in Nigeria, some have been able to find a way out to make ends meet for themselves. And that is through crypto and Forex Trading.
Albeit, Forex Trading has been long in existence and some people have been trading forex for decades in Nigeria before now. But the Forex Market became more known among Nigerian Youths during the pandemic. People saw this as an opportunity to make money while at home, and they jumped on it. That is mostly among youths as trading can be done on both mobile smartphones and laptops, given that there is an internet connection.
The same thing goes for crypto trading. The boom in the crypto market in 2017 captured the attention of not only the Nigerian youths but of the world at large. That created another opportunity among youths in Nigeria, and people started trading crypto on the popular crypto exchange platform, PAXFUL.
According to the PremiumTimes, there are over 300,000 retail forex traders in Nigeria, with a substantial rise that can be seen in female traders, with 46% more women who have registered trading accounts in the past year.
The surge in the number of retail forex traders in Nigeria happened within 2020 till date. International brokers from Europe and Asia, saw Africa, most especially Nigeria and South Africa, as a place full of opportunity when it comes to trading. Ever since then, more brokers have come into Africa looking for ways to expand their businesses. More Business developers have been employed in Nigeria and there are different brokers in Nigeria now, making it easy for youths to access and trade comfortably. The use of technology has made things easy as more easy-to-use platforms are now being created by brokers.
Amidst all the brokers who offer their services to Nigerian traders, some of the most popular well-regulated brokers include FXTM, Pepperstone, Exnesss, XM, IC Markets, FBS, Alpari, HotForex, and OctaFX.
Each broker has created a learning platform for traders to become acquainted with the market and how to manage risk in the forex market. Moreover, the addition of the Naira deposit on their platform has saved Nigerians a lot of stress. Converting Naira to Dollar is a headache on its own as Nigerian Banks can only sell a specific amount of Dollars in adherence to the CBN rule.
Earlier this year, the Central bank of Nigeria banned cryptocurrency in Nigeria. The decision made it difficult for crypto traders to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. But in every chaos lies an opportunity, Binance, a Cayman Island-based cryptocurrency exchange platform, created a peer-to-peer (P2P) trading on its app, specifically for its Nigerian customers. That has made it possible for the Nigerian Youths to keep trading cryptos among themselves.
Social media platforms have played a huge role in spreading trading knowledge among Nigerian Youths. People with a better understanding of the market can organize crypto and forex classes online. And they have been able to reach out to a lot of people by sharing their knowledge in various online groups. That has helped a lot of people to get to know about the market and be able to trade successfully from their mobile phones and laptops.
Aside from the fact that the employment situation among Nigerian Youths is still worrisome, tremendous effort has been made by the Youths' initiative to dabble into other ways to make money instead of waiting to get a 9-5 job. And most people have fallen in love with the new world order of working-from-home. I believe the Nigerian government still has a lot to do to reduce the unemployment rate among the Youths.