StartUp Africa is an organisation that had its origins in the USA and offices in Nairobi, Kenya. The mission of Start Up is to: “ inspire and support the building of business skills and endeavours that foster financial independence, create jobs and grow African economies” – StartUp Africa website - June 2020
The organisation has four strategic goals:
- Connecting, mentoring and building business skills;
- Empowering young unemployed and underemployed African youth to build and sustain businesses, create jobs and add value to the economies of their countries;
- Increasing entrepreneurial engagement of the African diaspora and allies globally to support the young people with whom we work; and
- Exposing the young people from an early age to entrepreneurial skills
One of the mechanisms that the organisation uses to build and develop entrepreneurial skills is an entrepreneurship and innovation focused pitch competition that is run in partnership with the Commonwealth Association of Technical Universities and Polytechnics in Africa (CAPA). CAPA operates in a number of African countries and has members that come from TVET institutions. In 2019, they conducted entrepreneurship training and piloted a Talent Innovation Competition held in Kigali Rwanda. This competition awards young entrepreneurs with cash and in-kind services for their innovation and creativity to help them towards implementation of their startups.
Entrepreneurship training augments vocational training and provides a platform to expose young people to the possibilities of self-employment. Whether a student lives in a village or an urban area, is studying plumbing or electrical engineering, he/she can take home not just a certificate, but a toolbox of skills to start a business.
Our Approach
When COVID struck, the second round of the Talent Innovation Competition was due to commence. The initial decision was to postpone, but the organisation and its partners did a very quick turnaround and instead, looked for ways to make it possible. They did the following:
- Conducted a survey to ascertain whether participants had devices with Internet capability.
- Met participants virtually to identify how COVID had affected them. Based on feedback, a curriculum was developed.
- A line-up of speakers and workshop presenters were sourced and secured.
- Sessions were developed, including Entrepreneurship 101, COVID and Design Thinking, Life Skills and Career Choices, Getting started with IoT: Design Thinking Approach, Creating a Culture of Innovation, Tomorrow’s Engineers Today, and E-Commerce.
- They combined high school and TVET students and some university students
Key Results
Under extreme circumstances, StartUp Africa was able to continue with this much-needed training intervention by making use of available technology. In addition, as a result of the skills gained on Design Thinking, one group of students has developed a respirator. They have created a prototype and have submitted it to the Ministry of Health for testing.
Additionally, some youth reported seeing or hearing about people in their immediate communities who did not have access to food. During a brainstorm session, there was consensus that the COVID-19 pandemic is a health and human crisis threatening the food security and nutrition of many Africans who do not have support of their governments or non-profits that cater to this need. Inspired to find a solution, and with funding and technical support from StartUpAfrica and partners, some of the youth have embarked on a banana planting initiative, where they see increased banana farming in their region addressing the food security, but also, creating jobs and income for the youth growers.
Lessons Learnt (Success Factors & Challenges)
Challenges
A key challenge was to reach as many students as possible after the schools had closed. This took time and effort but it was overcome.
Another challenge is to find the funding that is required to build platforms for online learning and additional content to go with it. The organisation has learnt how vitally important a platform is if critical learning is to continue.
Success Factors
In addition to successfully pioneering online learning for the first time, there were a number of other success factors:
- Working with university administration to get access to facilities and tools;
- Working with experts in a field, for example, a respiratory therapist who served as a mentor for the students who were designing a ventilator, thus strengthening the mentorship network;
- Two TVET students entered a virtual pitch competition in the USA at short notice and placed in the top 5 which gave them cash awards they were not expecting; they attributed their success to the webinars from different speakers/presenters.
- Successfully building up networks that had not been tapped previously;
- Working in multi-disciplinary teams; and
- Realising that they were capable of tapping on resources in the community to provide the support required to develop entrepreneurs of the future
- The consequence of this realisation was that people who would normally have charged for their time, now gave it willingly and free of charge.
Moving Forward
The organisation is exploring the building of a technology platform for virtual learning in the future to ensure that no interventions are cancelled. The expectation is that the Talent Innovation Competition will be run virtually. Students will be able to register, submit their concept papers, and even do their pitches online. In this way, judges will be able to work in different countries and judge the entries.
StartUp Africa has begun discussions with IT companies to provide a solution. Youth entrepreneurs in the programs will have a chance to be involved in this development.
