FG announces 1,500 YouWiN awardees today

One thousand five hundred successful applicants will today emerge from the third edition (2013/2014) of the Federal Government’s Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria (YouWiN) business plan competition.

This brings to 3,900 the total number of awardees that have been selected under the programme since its launch by the president in October 2011.

Each awardee, like in the previous editions, qualifies to receive between N1 million to N10 million grant to start up or expand his/her business based on the presented business proposal.

YouWiN is a business plan competition designed for both male and female entrepreneurs between ages 18 and 45 in Nigeria by the Federal Government aimed at creating sustainable jobs by encouraging and supporting young aspiring entrepreneurs in Nigeria to develop and execute business ideas and in turn employ other young Nigerians.

The finance ministry said today Tuesday that based on the huge impact of the programme so far, President Goodluck Jonathan had directed that the number of awardees be increased from 1,200 chosen, respectively, from the first and second editions to 1,500 in the third edition.
Of the 1,500 winners, 925 (62%) are male and 575 (38%) are female, also the top 5 winning sectors are farming, manufacturing of food and drinks, education, manufacturing of clothing and shoes, food and restaurant.

Explaining the selection process, the finance ministry said for the third edition, 114,463 Nigerians between the ages of 18 and 45 years applied out of which the initial 6,000 were selected and sent for entrepreneurship skills and business plan training.

A total of 2,250 top scoring applications were selected from the 6,000 based on anonymous evaluation by the Enterprise Development Center (EDC) of the Pan Atlantic University (PAU). Quality Assurance for this process was provided by the UK Plymouth Business School.