Harnessing Natural Resources for Youth Employment Generation in Katsina State, Nigeria

Abstract

Natural resources exploitation is an essential condition for human existence and throughout the history of mankind, humans have utilized natural resources to produce the materials they need to develop and sustain human populations. Nigeria is one of the developing countries that are endowed with a huge and vast array of natural resources in different states of the federation including Katsina State. This paper examines how the natural resources of the State can be harnessed to generate employment for the youths. Secondary sources of data generated through desk research from textbooks, conference papers, journal articles, environmental reports, magazines, and internet sourced materials were used to generate data for the study. The natural resource of the state consists of atmospheric, mineral, vegetation, and water resources that have not been fully harnessed to generate employment for a large number of teeming youths in the State. This is due mainly to various challenges faced in harnessing the natural resources of the State. It is recommended that these challenges should be overcome to enable the harnessing of these resources for youth employment generation.