British Council - Innovation for African Universities Programme updates

The programme is managed by a Centre of Excellence (CoE) comprising City University of London and University of Nairobi and ChangeSchool UK, The CoE support winners through expert –driven workshops to deepen their understanding of their project challenge.

The Innovation for African Universities (IAU)) Programme kicked off in September 2021 with the 24 projects that were successful in their application to join the programme.  The vision of the IAU Programme is to increase entrepreneurship, enterprise and employability of graduates from African Universities.  The projects are drawn from universities and entrepreneurial ecosystem from Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Kenya, who have teamed up with universities from the UK.  The programme is run under the auspices of the British Council.

The projects look at various issues that affect communities within the four sub-Sahara Africa countries.  Project cover a wide range challenge such as exploration of barriers and opportunities for current and latent social entrepreneurs in South Africa, accelerating youth entrepreneurship in tourism in Kenya, problems facing agri-business in Ghana from a logistics perspective and advancing innovative entrepreneurship education and digital skills in the youth in Nigeria

In the first session of workshops, participants have been able to get insights on how to deepen their understanding of the context of their projects. In the session led by Dr. Sara Jones, from City University of London, participants looked at the progress needed and barriers in the way of this projects, in their context.  During the workshop participants also had the opportunity to share the big picture on the current situation in the 4 SSA countries with regard to youth employment, student employability, small business needs, self-employment and the current status of higher education institution entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives. 

The second session provided participants with the opportunity to deepen their understanding of their stakeholders.  Presenting during the workshop, Dr. Samuel Ruhiu from computing for development {C4D lab )University of Nairobi, shared powerful insights on the Empathy Map which is the process of understanding the stakeholder persona and the need to carefully evaluate what the needs and struggles of the stakeholders are.  Dr. Ruhiu underscored the importance of understanding the needs of the users, the need to see through their eyes what they value and what is stopping them from achieving it. 

The third workshop allowed representatives of three projects one from Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya to share their project innovation challenge with other community of practice members in the programme. Dr Thea van der Westhuizen from University Kwazulu-Natal School of management, IT, and governance was the guest speaker and shared insights on how co-creation of curriculum and inspiring the learners can lead to employability and innovation with social impact

Participants continue to develop their projects further as the programme progresses. Collaboration, sharing, learning and connecting with other community of practice members within the programme and beyond is central to developing solutions that will be successful in building solutions to youth employability and entrepreneurship in Sub Saharan Africa.

The IAU programme continues to unfold. 

These updates are courtesy of Prof. Mary Kinoti, Principle Investigator ,University of Nairobi

Innovation for African Universities, Centre of Excellence Partner University.