Nigeria's flagship digital skills program has trained 135,000 fellows and just secured fresh international funding. Free training still runs on a connection students have to find themselves.
The Federal Government's 3 Million Technical Talent program, 3MTT, has quietly become one of Nigeria's largest digital skills initiatives. As of March 2026, the program had trained 135,000 fellows through three completed cohorts and 200 active learning centres, alongside more than 300,000 additional community learners, working toward a target of 3 million trained Nigerians by 2027.
The program is scaling its ambitions too. At a Partner Network launch in March 2026, the European Union and Denmark committed an additional 11 million euros in combined funding under what's being called 3MTT 2.0, alongside new specialised tracks in areas like AI and data science, built with partners including Microsoft and AWS. In August 2026, the Minister of Education unveiled a related National Digital Training Academy, with an initial cohort of 928 graduates from a World Bank-backed diploma program in Jigawa State.
None of this training is free to attend in the way it sounds. Every session, every module, every assignment submission for a program like 3MTT runs on a fellow's own internet connection. The government funds the curriculum, the instructors, the platform. It doesn't fund the data a fellow needs to actually log in from home, especially for fellows outside the 200 physical learning centres, relying entirely on their own connection.
That's not a criticism of the program. It's a genuinely good, well-funded initiative doing real work. It's simply a reminder that "free training" and "free to actually access" are two different things, and the gap between them falls squarely on the fellow.
This is arguably one of the clearest, most direct matches between what Reachable does and what a student actually needs next. A verified student with reliable donor-funded data isn't just staying connected for coursework. They're able to actually show up for a program like 3MTT consistently, the kind of program that can genuinely change their trajectory, without a bad data month meaning a missed cohort.
This post is based on public reporting and official 3MTT program updates as of September 2026, including coverage of the March 2026 Partner Network launch and the August 2026 National Digital Training Academy unveiling. Program figures may change as new cohorts are announced.