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NBC Mentors Youth on Entrepreneurship, Financial Literacy, Life Skills

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The Nigerian Bottling Company Ltd (NBC) has reiterated its unwavering commitment towards empowering the nation’s youth, through programs that enable them to thrive and also contribute meaningfully to economic development.

The manager, Sustainability & Community Affairs, Nigerian Bottling Company (NBC), Ifeoma Okoye reaffirmed this at the campus edition of the company’s Youth Empowered Programme tagged #DiscoverDevelopSucceed held on Tuesday, May 25, 2021, at the University of Lagos.

In her opening remarks which centered on intentional mentorship and bridging skills gap, Okoye noted that Youth Empowered is designed to set the youths on the right path to success by providing them with sustainable life and business skills.

According to her, there is a gap between the skills that employers look out for, and the skills that many job seekers possess. This disparity, she said, makes it difficult for individuals to find jobs and for employers to find appropriately trained workers. “At NBC, we are committed to empowering youths across the country with trainings that help to bridge this skillset gap.

The Nigerian edition of the Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (CCHBC) Youth Empowered, was launched in 2017. In its various forms ranging from the free online training platform, three-day workshops and one day campus workshops, Youth Empowered has reached over 21,000 youths who are positively making impact and building the society.

This UNILAG program was facilitated by the chief executive officer, UnoCasa, Ekundayo Odele; chief operating officer, Shallem Consultants, Sola Ayo-Soyemi; principal consultant, Kasher Consulting, Dayo Oluwole, and Shina Matti, UnoCasa, all expert trainers that took the participants through the rudiments of life and business skills, CV and interview leveraging, business planning, financial literacy, and networking strategies to navigate life after graduation.

In her keynote talk at the program, Legal Director, Nigerian Bottling Company (NBC), Abiodun Peters, extolled the unyielding Nigerian spirit, especially among the youths, to succeed despite the current unemployment situation and other economic challenges in the country.

She strongly advised the Nigerian youth to be very deliberate about self-development, “today, you are empowered because you have made a decision for yourself to take your future, your career into your hands, and you are empowered because you have the Nigerian spirit in you,” Peters said.

Mr. A Abolarin, a student of the Electrical Electronics Engineering department of the University of Lagos, and a participant of the program, commended the organizers saying, this was a very fantastic initiative and an opportunity to learn new things that may not have been readily available to me otherwise. It was also a great opportunity to meet people and learn the path to get the things I really want. We need more initiatives like this to show the youth the way and how to get our act right.”

The deputy managing director, PS Offshore Nigeria Limited, Micheal Oyewo, commended the Nigerian Bottling Company for the initiative, saying that in running a graduate trainee scheme such as Youth Empowered, NBC is demonstrating that it is a good corporate citizen.

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Enterprise

Andela Rwanda Launches Apprenticeship Program to Connect Africa’s Top Organizations with Talent

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Andela, the global network for remote technical talent, has announced the launch of the Andela Rwanda Apprenticeship Program, a 12-week program that aims to introduce global organizations to the vast potential of up-and-coming Rwandese tech talent.

The apprenticeship program offers companies the chance to build their team with graduate apprentices from the Andela Technical Leadership Program (ATLP). The ATLP is Andela Rwanda’s signature accelerator program, in partnership with the country’s Ministry of ICT and Innovation,  empowering Rwandese nationals with the prerequisite software engineering they need to be future tech leaders. 

The ATLP simulates a real-world technology product setup, where participants learn to work within a team to build web applications with best practices based on Javascript and its associated frameworks. The program has so far successfully trained 380 junior engineers from across ten different African countries, with over 70% of the graduates from the ATLP currently employed. There are currently 150 additional learners in the program. 

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Opportunik Global Fund Set to Break Barriers Through Its African and Diasporan-Focused Investment Fund

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Opportunik, a private wealth fund giving Africans and Diasporans access to global investments, announced today that it will launch its licensed fund on the 2nd of May 2023. Administered by Accuvise Administrators Limited, a registered fund administrator based in Mauritius, Opportunik Global Fund [OGF] will present a diverse mix of asset classes enabling investors to create wealth with minimal currency or political risk. 

OGF was created to address African investors’ pain points, including high barriers to global deals, insufficient yield on smaller ticket sizes, ever-changing foreign exchange rates, and high inflation and taxation. Participants can be located anywhere in the world but must invest in the most traded currencies, such as the US Dollar. As one of the first private retail funds aimed at Africans, the multi-asset growth fund will provide the following: 

  • Low-entry barrier with a minimum investment of $5,000 and optional monthly subscriptions in multiples of $1,000
  • Access to diversified asset classes and investment strategies in multiple financial markets
  • Projected return of 10-20% paid annually to investors’ bank accounts
  • 5-year tenure for the principal with an annual payment of returns 
  • Ability to track wealth journey and measure returns and financial growth

Commenting on the fund, Kola Oyeneyin, CEO of Opportunik Global Fund, said: “We created Opportunik Global Fund to directly tackle the challenges many African investors face when looking for global investments. As an African-born fund, we recognise that the continent is full of wealth opportunities; however, there is a need to empower rising middle-class Africans with a platform to enable them to access new markets beyond the continent’s borders. 

Driven by an in-house team of fund managers located across Africa (South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Zambia), OGF will work alongside Accuvise Administrators. With over $216m in Assets Under Administration, Accuvise has a proven track record of structuring and administrating investment funds. 

According to the Henley & Partners’ Africa Wealth Report, a total of $2.4 trillion total investable wealth is held on the continent, with South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and Morocco accounting for more than half of Africa’s high-net-worth individuals.

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PMI Seeks Stronger Partnerships to Bridge Education and Employment Gap

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Non-profit professional association and global advocacy group for the project management profession, Project Management Institute (PMI) has recognised that linkages are required between education and employability so that young skilled Africans are able to deploy their skills in formal employment where available or create their own opportunities through effective entrepreneurship.

 As the future of work becomes more projectised, project-based skills will become essential to helping changemakers turn ideas into reality and overcome complex challenges. 

PMI predicts the global economy will need 25 million new project professionals by 2030. In its Talent Gap report, it attributes this demand to an increase in the number of jobs requiring project management skills, economic growth, and retirement rates. 

A shortage of this critical skill could pose considerable risk to organisations as they rely on project teams to implement strategic initiatives on time and on budget. Globally, the talent gap is being exacerbated by the post- pandemic ‘Great Resignation,’ which has seen workers quitting their jobs. 

In Africa, however, “we observe the opposite trend,” says George Asamani, PMI’s Business Development Leader for Africa. 

“The continent graduates around 11 million young people from schools and universities each year, according to Junior Achievement Africa. This presents the continent with an opportunity to leverage this demographic dividend to address shortages of project management professionals in the developed world – while also developing the project skills to help young Africans build the conditions for much broader economic participation at home.” 

PMI has successfully partnered with universities in Sub-Saharan Africa to provide practical courses to help students while still at university to understand how to apply project management skills for delivery in the real world. Through a train-the-trainer model, lecturers and professorial staff at universities are trained to teach project management skills to reach as many students as possible across all disciplines. 

“While some universities include these courses as part of their overall fees so that students receive project management training free at point of delivery, others deliver the training as additional pay-as-you-go courses. Regardless of how universities choose to build these critical project management bridges into their curricula, PMI provides 60% discounts on all certifications received by university students,” says Asamani. 

PMI together with Microsoft has also built the Citizen Developer courseware available to partner universities or directly to individual students. Microsoft estimates that an emerging class of citizen developers will create 450 million apps over the next five years using software development dubbed “low-code / no-code”.

“The execution of all projects today relies heavily on digital ability. 86% of IT decision-makers say the biggest challenge to digitally transform their business is too few developers. That’s where the power of citizen development comes in,” says Asamani. 

In Africa, PMI has partnered with the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) which seeks to add US$ 10 billion to the African economy by creating 10,000 new businesses on the continent. PMI’s own research shows that one of the five most common causes of entrepreneurship failure is execution risk, or the inability to deliver projects successfully. 

In response, and together with the TEF, “PMI has developed a webinar series that guides young African entrepreneurs build businesses and execute projects by successfully managing risk through ideation, strategy and delivery,” reports Asamani. The webinar series also supports young African entrepreneurs directly with mentorships provided through the TEF.

PMI also partners with the African Leadership Group, composed of the African Leadership Academy (ALA), the African Leadership University (ALU) and the ALX career accelerator to empower young Africans with project management skills. 

At ALA, PMI works with undergrad students who during their first-year present ideas which are formally critiqued, marked and refined. During the second year, students work on delivering their ideas practically, supported by mentors through the PMI South Africa Chapter. 

“Today, beyond education, where we are already doing a lot of work – we also need to find ways to work with government and the private sector to reach and empower a much broader segment of young Africans. All of us have a role to play in creating a more confident and readily employable workforce,” concludes Asamani. 

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