BOEING, the world’s leading aerospace company, and Junior Achievers (JA) Africa, an Accra, Ghana-based NGO, pledged on Wednesday to deepen their partnership to provide skills and entrepreneurial training for more than 5,000 youths in Africa.
The partners made this pledge when they signed an agreement in the Ghanaian capital and launched their new project dubbed Our Future-Tomorrow’s Innovators to train the selected youth from 13 African countries in solving complex problems in various fields.
The partners said the new training programme is part of their efforts to lift the youth in Africa out of poverty through skills acquisition to position them for the world of work and create jobs for themselves and others.
‘The programme will make a life-changing impact on our youth, enabling them to take their future into their own hands and empower them with the knowledge to do so,’ said Simi Nwogugu, CEO of JA Africa.
Nwogugu observed that about seven million African youth entered the weak labour market annually, where high unemployment, low productivity, and poverty-level incomes were commonplace.
This situation requires innovative and employable skills to face the future. Enterprise development remains the best pathway to creating employment opportunities and ensuring sustainable livelihoods, but only a few governments have mainstreamed entrepreneurship education into the curriculum,’ added the CEO.
She said the programme, with support from INJAZ Al-Arab, a non-profit organisation for education and training in workforce readiness, financial literacy and entrepreneurship, would create the opportunity for the partners to branch into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)-focused programmes that respond to market needs and cater for future demands.
Nwogugu added that the beneficiary youth could become leaders in their respective fields in the future, considering their passion, energy, and drive, ‘and that will continue to inspire the generations to come, creating a lasting legacy.’
Under the programme, 100 Tanzanian youth will participate in innovation Day Camps. Also, 1,300 youth and students in Ghana, Madagascar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo will focus on digital entrepreneurial education.
‘Boeing is delighted to continue its decade-long legacy of empowering African youth, equipping them with the skills to be successful in today’s labour market, said Kuljit Ghata-Aura, President of Boeing in the Middle-East, Turkey, and Africa.
He said this new level of the partnership would allow more talented young Africans to reach their full potential and leapfrog into a brighter future.
The programme will also offer training to 100 students in Mauritania and 200 in Sudan to own their economic successes. In Nigeria, the model will train secondary school students to build innovative businesses to solve problems within their communities.
He said Boeing had spent about $12.1 million in community outreach programmes across Africa over the past 12 years, focusing on providing systemic improvement in education and economic empowerment for those in poverty to reach their full potential.
Abeiku Greene, Executive Director of JA Ghana, said the selected youths would participate in innovation competitions to design solutions to complex challenges in Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Water Sanitation and Hygiene, and Information and Communications Technology (ICT).
Over the past 40 years, JA Africa has reached out to at least 300,000 African youth annually, creating real change at a grassroots level.
The United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organisation (UNESCO) said only 12 percent of Africa’s students graduate with degrees in STEM disciplines, with ICT and engineering accounting for not more than four percent of these graduates.