Africa currently has the youngest population in the world.  Africa, therefore also has the world’s fastest-growing labour force, which means the continent needs to upskill the workforce, create jobs and increase job creators.

Innovative interventions are needed to equip the youth with the necessary skills to gain employment and upskill the job creators to create meaningful jobs.  The education sector on the continent holds a large share of the responsibility to equip and train the future labour force and job creators.  Therefore, tertiary institutions in Africa need to support young entrepreneurs’ development actively.  However, universities also require upskilling in their entrepreneurial education to do this successfully since, traditionally, universities focus on training job seekers.

In the short term, the STEM & Social Impact Business Incubator project will focus on developing young entrepreneurs focusing on the core areas of youth employability, digital innovation, or climate innovation through an innovative incubator programme run in Nigeria.  In addition, the project will also focus on knowledge exchange between the implementation partners to ensure the development of best practices for entrepreneurial support.

In the long term, the project, which is a partnership between the Godfrey Okoye University, London School of Economics and Sparks Concepts Management Limited,  will lead to job creation for youth as the entrepreneurs supported in the programme will become job creators.  Additionally, the project will spark a culture of creativity and innovation within the partner institutions and strengthen the cross-geography institutional collaborations in the future.

Through the business incubation programme, the project partners aim to exchange knowledge across all three institutions and upskill each organisation to develop and continue supporting entrepreneur development programmes in the long term.

We wish this project well as we unite to grow and innovate Africa for youth employment opportunities

British Council – Innovation for African Universities Programme (IAU)

The IAU programme is implemented by the Centre of Excellence (CoE), a partnership between the City, University of London, the University of Nairobi and ChangeSchool UK.

The Programme comprises 2 4 partnerships of UK universities, SSA universities and entrepreneurial ecosystem organisations.  The Programme is running in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana & South Africa.

We’re looking forward to working in partnership with the project to exchange knowledge and ideas to strengthen the role of universities in entrepreneurship ecosystems.

To find out more: https://bit.ly/3hUjYdL