Ayodeji Babatunde: Empowering young Nigerians to become superpreneurs
Despite her degrees in Biological Sciences and Commerce, young Ayodeji Babatunde believes that Nigerians need more than academic qualifications to contribute meaningfully to the growth and development of the economy.
She believes that youths should focus more on what they can contribute in terms of goods and services in order to have positive impact on the overall national income.` The entrepreneur is of the opinion that young Nigerians have what it takes to be creators of jobs rather than perpetual seekers.
Little wonder she has been going round secondary schools across Lagos State to catch Nigerians young, train and mentor them on a series of entrepreneurial skills. These skills are expected to earn the students reliable means of livelihood while making them contribute hugely to the economy.
Ayodele, who studied Biological Sciences at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), and Commerce at Bocconi University, Italy, is providing an enterprise empowerment and career guidance scheme for secondary school students from low-income families in Lagos State.
Through a non-for-profit career development/empowerment programme for the youth, with a strong support from Daystar Christian Centre, Lagos, Nigeria, Ayodeji is providing students and unemployed youths tools that will enable them make sustainable income. She is particularly interested in empowering indigent students with 21st century skills that will enable them become job creators.
The young entrepreneur is also deploying seamless structure for sourcing and effectively working with partners like Teach for Nigeria, JobMag, Jobberman, Uber, Careerdirect, Stutern and industry experts facilitators for Mentor-Meet Career Fair which caters for well over 1,000 young professionals, quarterly.
“I have an insatiable passion to empower the youth in order to create a ripple effect that will reach a larger community; a way to give back to the society. My professional expertise with a telecommunications company, my over five years working experience with Etisalat, now 9Mobile, has given me the needed expertise.
“Now, I offer business development services to micro and small businesses through Cerchy Community, a circle of entrepreneurs across Nigeria which I aim to extend to the rest of Africa,” she says.
“I am actively involved in programmes addressing key youth development issues. As a business strategist and social entrepreneur, fully aware of the economic value of empowering a youth, I focus my professional expertise on human capacity development, facilitating business strategy sessions for SMEs through training sessions on capacity development for individuals entrepreneurs and business owners.
“I also help businesses achieve and improve on their target key performance indices through employee training programmes and employee performance reviews. I am also very passionate about finding opportunities to volunteer at community engagement projects on youth engagement and development.
“I volunteer as a career and business coach at Fate Foundation’s ‘Net Economy Project network’ where I regularly mentor and train unemployed young people on career positioning. I also volunteered at the ‘Love Initiative Save a Child’ campaign where I helped train young children in Idi Araba Orphanage Home, Lagos on self- esteem.”
Ayodeji Babatunde is a lead business strategist and founder at OutliersHCD Consulting. She has served as project manager and team coordinator for CareerPlus in 2017 and a member of the youth delegation from Nigeria to Bénin République who went to celebrate the country’s 56th Anniversary in 2016.
She received an award of excellence in 2015 as top one percent Nigerian executive in the telecommunication industry during her working period in Etisalat. She is a West Africa YALI Fellow for Entrepreneurship Initiative in Africa and Fate Foundation Youth Mentor and a United Nations Volunteer.
When asked to offer advice on what could change the Nigerian youths’ mentality to embrace entrepreneurship and self-dependence, she says that entrepreneurship and vocational studies must be the future of Nigeria to realise a shift from the current status to better economic situation.
“I am pushing for review in our current educational curricula to include entrepreneurship from the primary level where young minds are trained to be entrepreneurial in approaching immediate issues.
” I believe this will form a catalyst that will impact our future and economy”, she adds.
RAZAQ AYINLA