Business
228 Youths Benefit From ITF Programme
A total number of 228
trainees would benefit from an Industrial Training Fund Programme billed to end by December 7, 2013.
The Coordinator, Rivers West Senatorial District of the programme Hon. Otuwarikpo Reddy who spoke to our correspondent yesterday at Ahoada said the training included fishery, tiling, interlocking and ICT among others.
He said the programme known as “National Industrial Skills Development Programme” (NISDP) was organised by the Industrial Training Fund (ITF).
The Coordinator said worried by the rate of joblessness among youths who were out of school, the government decided to come up with the programme to help develop youths with special skills to enable them grow.
“Presently, we have a lot of jobless youths who are out of school with no skills and when government wants to help people you find out that they have no skill” he said.
He revealed that at the expiration of the programme the government would empower the beneficiaries with some loan to enable them start their own business in the areas they have been trained.
Also speaking, the Training Development Officer of ITF, Mr. Ezinma Kashimire said the programme was designed to help those at the grassroots level.
He explained that when government decided to grant amnesty only to those who carried guns some people felt cheated.
He said this programme also intends to reach out to those who may feel alienated by the Federal Government’s gesture.
On complains by some of the trainees that the programme may go the way of earlier ones, Mr. Kashmire said any serious and reasonable trainee should not wait for government, their parents or otherwise to start up something as soon as they finish their training.
he said the programme was a pilot one and logistics from government was not forthcoming.
he said the scheme, a brain child of the ITF was capital intensive even as he said specialised areas like welding and electrical installation among others were deliberately excluded from the programme.
Cornerstone of Financial Services
A survey of more than 1 000 global finance leaders undertaken by digital payment network Ripple shows that 72% of respondents believe they need to offer a digital asset solution to remain competitive.
According to Ripple, leaders from the banking, fintech, corporate and asset management sector have made it clear that the “digital asset revolution is happening now”.
“Digital assets are quickly becoming a cornerstone of financial services, underpinned by progressive regulation, growing interest from Tier-1 banks, a steady consumer shift from banks to fintech providers, and booming stablecoin adoption,” Ripple says.
The survey was conducted in early 2026 and the findings released in March.
Stablecoin Boon or Bane?
Ripple has experienced significant success in the stablecoin sector since launching its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in 2024.
With a market cap of $1.56 billion, it is considered a major regulated player in the market.
No doubt the platform was pleased to learn through its own survey that financial leaders were most bullish about stablecoins.
Roughly three-quarters of respondents believed they could boost cash-flow efficiency and unlock trapped working capital.
Ripple noted that finance leaders were thinking about stablecoins as more than “just a new way to execute payments”; instead, they viewed them as effective tools for treasury management.
In March 2026, Ripple began testing a new trade finance model built around RLUSD in a bid to increase the speed of cross-border payments.
The pilot initiative, developed alongside supply chain finance company Unloq [https://unloq.com], is running on the XRP Ledger inside a testing framework developed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The Asian city-state is one of the platform’s biggest growth markets.
The idea behind the project is to see whether stablecoin-based settlement can streamline trade finance, too often hampered by reliance on intermediaries and slow reconciliation.
The only potential drawback is that if the initiative takes off, the Ripple to USD price could be negatively affected.
Ripple has always championed its native XRP token as a bridge asset, the “middleman” in the process of a financial institution turning dollars in the US into pounds in the UK, for example.
Ripple converts dollars into XRP and then back into pounds.
If RLUSD can do exactly the same thing, questions will be asked about XRP’s relevance.
That is a bridge Ripple will have to cross if it gets to that point.
Tokenisation Partners
Another interesting finding from Ripple’s survey is that most banks and asset managers are seeking tokenisation partners to help execute their strategies.
Some 89% of respondents said digital asset storage and custody were top priority. “Token servicing/lifecycle management also ranks highly for banks at 82%, while asset managers place greater emphasis on primary distribution at 80%,” Ripple found.
The survey also revealed that just more than half of fintechs and financial institutions want an infrastructure provider that can offer a “one-stop-shop solution”. This rose to 71% among corporate financial leaders.
Ripple attributes this to institutions and firms wanting uncomplicated, cohesive systems.
Infrastructure Rules
In its final analysis, Ripple says companies across the board are looking for partners and solutions that are “secure, compliant, battle-tested and that enable growth and execution”.
“The message is clear: infrastructure decisions made today will shape competitive positioning tomorrow.”
No surprise that this is precisely where Ripple is placing much of its focus.
