Hello 2020: On To The Next Challenge
After many years catalyzing innovation and social change, I’m happy to inform the world that I have stepped out of daily operations at Co-Creation Hub (CcHub) and from my role as Director of Innovation, to tackle a fresh challenge.
What A Decade
Almost 9 years ago to the day, Bosun and I introduced CcHub to the world at Social Innovation Camp, Lagos and with it, our quest to mobilize Nigerians to design and execute solutions to tackle the many intractable problems in Nigeria.
9 years on and that dream has thrived far beyond our imagination.
From it Yaba was birthed as Ground Zero for tech in Nigeria; many innovators got the push and support to tackle big problems like government corruption, maternal mortality, waste management amongst others; many brilliant talents out of Nigeria have been introduced to the world, and most importantly a whole generation now believe we can use innovation and entrepreneurship to solve the challenges we had been so used to all our lives. Now our dream is to scaling to push the impact beyond Nigeria to the rest of Africa.
I can only look back at my CcHub journey with content. Of course, it wasn’t always a rosy ride but certainly, the manifestation of the dream causes my chest to swell with pride.
However, the time has come to chase another dream & challenge that I have deferred for so long and so, sometime in 2019, I formally stepped down from the day-to-day operations at CcHub.
What’s Next? — African Youth Employability
For years, I have been concerned about how to address Africa’s bulging youth population and their desire for meaningful work - AT SCALE.
By current demographic trends, Africa is set to have 420m youth of working age by 2030.
Unfortunately, deep challenges with our education systems mean a lot of these young people will not be adequately prepared for the jobs available in the world. Already 50% of the 10m young people who leave African universities annually do not find work.
Ironically, despite our unemployment and underemployment challenges, in 2018 45% of employers globally struggled to fill positions and this is a growing trend.
Of course, many laudable initiatives exist trying to address this challenge but I am not sure the pace of our solutions are matching the scale of the problem.
Do It Like A Designer
I’ve spent the last 2 years trying to understand the different dimensions to the challenge of youth unemployment & employability in Africa and where I can make a meaningful contribution. This is my design statement:
“How might we get young Africans ready for meaningful work at scale?”
In September 2018, I went back to school to do a research-based Masters in Education Technology/Learning Science at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research affiliated to the University of Paris. I was (and still am) convinced that the root of the problem and the solution lies in education with digital technology as a critical platform for scale.
A few design parameters we took into consideration in framing the solution were…
Not another coding bootcamp: Despite my work in the tech startup ecosystem, I didn’t want to create a solution purely focused on building digital technology skills. I know many talented young people who don’t want to learn how to code and even they deserve livelihood opportunities.
Learning by doing: I also didn’t want to create another training programme yet I want people to gain applicable and relevant competencies. My 23 years as a trainer/facilitator makes me know that most learning doesn’t happen in a classroom, online or offline, but by DOING.
Pan-African as Default: My extensive travel across Africa (23 countries) made me realize this was not a challenge peculiar to Nigeria and so I want to build a solution that is pan-African from Day 1.
Hello Qiesto
With all these in mind, I am pleased to introduce the world to Qiesto, a platform that will allow young people to use and showcase their competencies as a pathway to a meaningful future (jobs, further studies or entrepreneurship).
Through the platform, forward-thinking organizations from all over the world can crowdsource breakthrough ideas, market insights, and services from a distributed network of millennials and Gen Z talent across Africa.
I’ve assembled a first-class team (spread across 4 African countries) and we have thrown ourselves into the task of building the platform which we will unveil in the coming months. If you want to be notified when it launches, let us know here.
We have been speaking to organizations all over the world, some of whom have already commissioned challenges for our young people. If you want to learn more about how the challenges work and if it might be appropriate for your organization, hit me up in the comments.
We have also been engaging youth and student networks as well as educators across Africa who have members with competencies that should be translated into meaningful work. If you run any such networks/institution and would like to know how we can add value to your people, please feel free to contact us.
On the whole, we are pleased with the response we have received so far and can’t wait to show you what we have to offer
Appreciations
I want to end this post by thanking my partners, Bosun Tijani & Tunji Eleso and the entire team at CcHub. I’m still a part of the family, albeit in a non-executive capacity and look forward to even greater strides in the future.
I also want to thank my amazing wife, Funmi and my three princesses (Fife, Nimi & Fire). It’s been a tough couple of years getting to this place but your love has sustained me. I’ll be counting on it for the next phase.
If you want to find out more about Qiesto and how you can be involved in what we are creating, I am happy to jump on a call. Also follow what Qiesto is up to on the web, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn
