A new report by HP has urged Nigeria to embed creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration in school curricula to prepare students for jobs shaped by AI.
As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes workplaces worldwide, a major new report from technology company HP and education experts has issued a clear call to Nigeria and other countries: overhaul school curricula to prioritise “durable skills” that machines cannot easily replicate.
The 2026 HP Futures report argues that creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration must move from the margins of education into the heart of teaching, funding, and assessment if young people are to thrive in an AI-driven labour market.
Released in late October 2026, the report was developed by HP in partnership with the Global Learning Council and the Education Leaders Forum.
It draws on contributions from 58 education experts, policymakers, and future-of-work leaders, alongside insights from an online student survey that gathered 6,206 responses across 37 countries between May and June 2026. 88% of the respondents were aged 12 to 17.
Findings were further informed by roundtable discussions, expert interviews, and case studies from schools, universities, employers, NGOs, and public systems around the world.
Why Durable Skills Matter in the Age of Intelligent Machines
The report’s central argument is straightforward. As AI takes on more routine cognitive tasks, the capabilities that will remain valuable and in many cases grow more important are distinctly human.
The authors define “durable skills” as human, transferable, and developmental abilities that retain their worth across technological, labour-market, and social change. Core among them are creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration.
Broader lists from the expert deliberations also include ethical reasoning, adaptability, resilience, empathy, judgment, systems thinking, design thinking, and lifelong learning.
AI fluency which is the ability to use AI tools effectively, understand their limits, question their outputs, and remain accountable for decisions was treated as an enabling layer that sits on top of these human foundations, not a replacement for them.
The experts recommend an “AI + X” approach: pairing AI study with another discipline so students develop domain knowledge alongside technical capability.
David McQuarrie, HP’s Chief Commercial Officer and Chair of HP Futures, underscored the urgency:
“Educators, policymakers and employers share a responsibility to prepare young people for the opportunities and challenges they will encounter throughout their lives and careers. As artificial intelligence rapidly transforms how we learn and work, that responsibility has never been more important. Education systems must do more to help students develop, demonstrate and continuously strengthen the capabilities that will remain valuable regardless of how technology evolves.”
Key Recommendations for Education Systems
The report moves beyond general advocacy to specific calls for action. Policymakers are urged to:
· Establish clear frameworks for developing durable skills and integrate them formally into school timetables rather than treating them as secondary or extracurricular.
· Fund these competencies adequately and assess them alongside traditional academic subjects.
· Maintain literacy, numeracy, and identity-forming learning as the foundation of education while using creative, hands-on teaching methods that build practical skills simultaneously.
· Provide greater support and professional development for teachers, who remain central to helping students develop these capabilities.
· Give students a meaningful voice in shaping curricula focused on durable skills.
· Create standardised assessment pathways and interoperable, transnational credentials so universities and employers can evaluate these skills against common benchmarks across borders.
· Design programmes with public education systems and low-resource communities in mind. Recommended approaches include teacher-mediated AI tools, low-bandwidth delivery, and predictable costs to prevent AI-era readiness from becoming another source of structural inequality.
Mayank Dhingra, HP’s Director and Global Head of Education Business and Strategy, highlighted the equity risk: policymakers must ensure that unequal access to AI and differences in students’ ability to demonstrate skills do not reinforce existing inequalities. He called on leaders in Nigeria and around the world to review the findings and use them to build education systems that set students up for success.
Student voices in the survey add weight to the message. While many expressed confidence in their education and in using AI, 82% worried that AI helps them work faster but may reduce the depth of their learning resulting in a striking concern about potential “cognitive atrophy.”
Nigeria’s large and youthful population makes the report’s recommendations particularly relevant. The country continues to face high youth unemployment and a widely acknowledged mismatch between what schools and universities teach and what employers need.
Recent federal government efforts have begun to pivot education toward digital skills, introducing modules on programming, AI, robotics, cybersecurity, and data analytics into secondary-school curricula. Education Minister Tunji Alausa has stressed that technical expertise must be backed by critical thinking, communication, teamwork, and problem-solving.
HP itself has been active on the ground in Nigeria, promoting industry-academia links through initiatives such as Gaming Garages that teach coding, design, storytelling, project management, and collaboration thereby building skills that transfer well beyond gaming into the broader digital and creative economy for Nigerians.
Country Director Emmanuel Eze has repeatedly argued that Nigeria’s competitive advantage lies in its people, but that stronger connections between education, industry, and employment are essential if talent is to translate into careers.
The HP Futures 2026 report arrives as a timely reinforcement of these efforts. It warns that simply adding technical modules is insufficient if the deeper human capabilities that AI cannot replace remain underdeveloped or unassessed.
Without deliberate integration of durable skills into formal curricula, funding, and assessment, Nigeria risks producing graduates who can operate tools but struggle to innovate, collaborate, or adapt in an AI-shaped workplace.
In an era when intelligent machines are transforming how work is done, the countries that thrive will be those that invest deliberately in the human skills that remain irreplaceable.
HP’s message to Nigeria and the world is clear: the time to embed creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration into the core of education is now—not as an optional extra, but as essential infrastructure for the future of work.
