AMI and EDC-Lagos launch online training component of BOI’s Youth Entrepreneurship Programme

The YES programme has produced some extraordinary numbers: in a six-week period, over 350,000 resources downloaded by 3500 young participants, who contributed 4,000 course and academy posts and 10,000 likes or acknowledgements of the contributions of others. AMI provided the online component of this very ambitious programme with our partner the Enterprise Development Centre in Lagos, sponsored by the Bank of Industry.  Online-only courses worldwide have a completion rate below 10%; but these keen young people have recorded completion rates between 75% and 85%!

AMI and Enterprise Development Centre(EDC) of the Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos have launched the online learning academy supporting the Nigeria Bank of Industry’s Youth Enterprise Support Programme (YES-P). The twelve week programme will be run in 2 cohorts of 3,500 young entrepreneurs each who will be given the opportunity to learn from AMI’s library of management and entrepreneurship courses. The online learning component of YES-P kicked off in June and will run through November, 2016.

The Youth Enterprise Support Programme (YES Programme) is the Nigeria Bank of Industry (BOI)’s initiative aimed at addressing the growing challenge of youth unemployment in Nigeria by providing entrepreneurship education and funding to aspiring entrepreneurs.

The objective of the YES programme is to equip young people with the requisite skills and knowledge  needed to be self-employed by starting and managing their own businesses. Participants are drawn from young ambitious entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 and 35 years with representation from all states and regions across the country – http://www.boi.ng.

The YES-P fund will be deployed to support the establishment and/or expansion of an estimated 1,200 enterprises. The scheme is expected to create a minimum of 6,000 direct jobs and 30,000 indirect jobs annually, totalling 36,000 jobs.

The programme consists of 3 key phases including:

• Twelve (12) weeks of extensive online Entrepreneurship and Business Management training

• Five (5) days in-class Entrepreneurship and Business Management training

•  Business financing under the BOI’s SME Cluster initiative

AMI and EDC launched the YES Programme online training for the first cohort comprising 3,500 successful applicants from the entries that will undergo 20 courses which started on June 13, 2016.

The group’s enthusiasm and commitment to the programme has been tremendous with participants engaging in all aspects of online activities – completing self-study courses online, practising the skills they are learning using the tools and assignments provided, and giving each other feedback in the course study groups.

The Academy has seen a huge level of engagement both in the course forums, on the community, and on social media – active participation, discussion and social learning on Facebook and WhatsApp. This self-driven learning has been powerful as learners support each other and provide ongoing support to those in more remote regions of Nigeria who had never gone through an online training before.

Online learning (open access MOOCs like this one) typically has completion rates of less than 10%.  For the YES programme, we have seen completion rates of up to 87% which is phenomenal for learning on this medium.

Moreover, we have seen very high engagement levels with over 4000 posts, over 350,000 resources downloaded and over 10,000 likes or acknowledgments of the contributions of others. Continued engagement will be needed to keep the cohorts motivated and focused with a strenuous pace set within the programme design.

AMI and EDC are working round the clock to keep up with the level of engagement and enthusiasm shown by the participants while keeping track of the amazing results, testimonials and interesting applications of learning that are being reported.

Participants are engaging with each other, sharing amazing stories of how they are applying what they are learning and writing letters of gratitude to BOI for this incredible initiative. The participants have shared very positive feedback on the impact this programme has had in their day-today activities as well as jobs.

To date, there have been over 27,500 course enrollments at the halfway mark of the first cohort. The learners have contributed over 7,000 community engagements (including wall posts, comments and likes), and they’ve downloaded and used our practical management tools more than 350,000 times in just 6 weeks.

At the end of this first cohort, EDC and BOI will select the most promising young entrepreneurs to move forward with the programme’s subsequent phases. By the end of the programme, AMI hopes to have graduated over 7,000 young people from the online academy and delivered more than 1M practical tools that will help with management effectiveness and entrepreneurship development across Nigeria.

If you want to help build business, management or work-readiness skills within your portfolio, client base or among beneficiaries, get in touch to see how we can help at info@africanmanagers.org or call us on : +254 20 525 9561 (Kenya) or +27 11 568 2664 (South Africa).