The National Income Activation Initiative (NIAI) has been unveiled at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, as a private-sector-led platform aimed at connecting women, youths and other economically under-engaged Nigerians with opportunities to generate income.
The initiative was unveiled during the Second National Gender Inclusion Conference, #SheIsIncluded 2026, organised by the Presidential Committee on Economic and Financial Inclusion in the Office of the Vice President.
Speaking at the conference, Vice President Kashim Shettima said Nigeria’s ambition of building a $1 trillion economy could not be achieved without greater participation of women in economic activities.
Shettima also highlighted the Federal Government’s shift from policy pronouncements to what he described as an ‘architecture of delivery’, designed to connect women and young people with skills, capital, markets and emerging economic opportunities.
NIAI was among the initiatives highlighted at the conference.
The initiative is built around the pathway, ‘Learn. Activate. Earn,’ with its promoters seeking to address the gap between skills acquisition and actual income generation.
Chief Executive Officer of NIAI, Khurairah Musa, said the initiative was designed to move economic empowerment beyond training and certificates to measurable participation in the economy.
‘Training is important, but training alone does not create income. We have to build the bridge between the skills people acquire and the markets, businesses and opportunities through which they can actually earn,’ Musa said.
She said NIAI connects participants with businesses and opportunity providers in areas including agriculture, ICT and digital services, beauty, sales, commodity sourcing and supply chains, food processing and manufacturing, as well as financial services.
Musa said the initiative had moved from the conceptual stage to implementation, with hundreds of participants undergoing orientation, vendor training and deployment towards income-generating activities.
She said NIAI was also developing systems for participant identification, vendor matching, activity and income tracking, monitoring and reporting.
According to her, the approach is intended to measure economic outcomes beyond the number of people who undergo training.
Musa said the long-term objective was to develop a scalable national income-activation ecosystem capable of connecting millions of Nigerians to private-sector opportunities.
‘NIAI is not about creating another training programme,’ she said. ‘It is about what comes next – connecting people to real businesses, real markets and real opportunities to earn.’
She added that the initiative would continue to work with government institutions, businesses, vendors and other stakeholders to expand opportunities for participants.
The initiative’s unveiling comes amid renewed calls for economic inclusion programmes to demonstrate how skills, financing and other interventions translate into sustainable livelihoods.