Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Higher Education Digital Ecosystem is a partnership between the University of Lincoln UK, Coal City University, Enugu, Nigeria, and the African Development Institute of Research Methodology (ADRIM) Enugu, Nigeria. The project is aimed at advancing entrepreneurship education (EE), entrepreneurial skills, digital skills and employability skills of students and graduates.
Nigeria has a high proportion of a youthful population. Almost 70% of the roughly 200 million people in the country are below 30 years (FGN, 2018). The public sector, private sector and labour are affected by the low level of digital skills in Nigeria (Igwe, 2021). In addition, youth unemployment in Nigeria disproportionately affects women due to the gender gap in education between boys and girls (CFR, 2019). This gender gap has worsened since the pandemic (Ettang, 2020).
The collaboration will help promote effective entrepreneurship education and skills development, significantly closing the gaps between graduates and higher rates of unemployment. Also, the partnership provides a symbiotic relationship between the partner institutions to learn from each other, enabling knowledge-sharing, and provision of online case study materials and resources which could be used by students, staff and other education stakeholders.
In the short term, this project seeks to investigate the problems to understand better the challenges youths face concerning the quality of education, skills development and employment, both paid and self-employment. In the long-term, the project seeks to offer provisions that can help to change the current situation.
More about Innovation for African Universities Programme
The Innovation for African Universities (IAU) programme, which is part of the British Council’s Going Global Partnerships programme, seeks to foster the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship within universities and facilitate the development of skills required to build industries, companies, products and services in Africa. The IAU programme is implemented by the Centre of Excellence (CoE), a partnership between the City, University of London, University of Nairobi, and ChangeSchool UK. The programme comprises 24 UK universities, Sub-Saharan African universities, and entrepreneurial ecosystem organizations. The programme is running in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa.

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