Junior Achievement deepens entrepreneurship capacity among students

Junior Achievement Nigeria (JAN), a non-profit financial education organisation, has in partnership with First Bank Nigeria plc and SAP, a consulting firm, trained Nigerian students on the fundamentals of starting and running small and medium scale businesses.

The entrepreneurship programme, tagged ‘JA Company of the Year Competition’, created opportunity for the students from the participating secondary schools to start up companies on their own, select the management teams, raise capital, manufacture their own products and market them.

At this year’s national competition held in Lagos recently, Dynamites from Government Girls Secondary School Abaji, Abuja emerged the winner; Enden Enterprises Product from Redeemers International Secondary School, Maryland, Lagos took the second position; Prime Products from Redeemers International Secondary School, Port Harcourt, took the third position while Exclusive from Day Secondary School, independence Layout, Enugu emerged the company with the most innovative product.

Ayokanmi Ayuba, a representative from SAP, while presenting her keynote address titled: ‘Disruptive Innovation’, express delight with the performance of the students, urging them to see the programme as not a competition but a phenomena and opportunity to build their future.

“With things we have seen today, I have no doubt that our students are climbing to the top of the market but there is need for them to be creative in order to remain on top of the market.”

According to her, disruptive innovation is an innovation that displaces an existing product through the creation of new market and value network. She also urged the students to make good use of the knowledge acquired during the programme as the progress in education and age.

Kunbi Wuraola, executive director, JAN, described the students as the hope of Nigeria to get to the next level in because the future of the country’s economy lies in their hands. She urged them to do the things within their capacity to make a different in their homes, schools, community and Nigeria at large.

To her, the students have the capacity as entrepreneurs to liberate the country from its security, electricity, unemployment and other challenges by transforming the country.

Assessing the performance of the students, Napa Onwusah, one of the judges expressed satisfaction with the performance of the students, whom she said operated at the level that most businesses operate especially in business presentation, starting and operation of a company as well as product positioning. “This was an eye-opener to how much our children can be able to do if given the right opportunity and environment. They were very impressive.”

Onwusah, who applauded JAN for opening the minds and eyes of the young generation, stated that the positive aspect of the children are self-confident, judging from the fact that one of the contestants told her that she will not be afraid not have a paid job after university because all she needs to do is to assess the market, deliver a service and get paid for it.

On why SAP supported the programme, she said that SAP as an expert application provider do a lot of businesses with big organisations, but are beginning to partner with small and medium enterprise, including start-up companies.

“We understand that investing in our children, we help in building companies from the ground-up so that will be able to utilise that to market our products. Being able to expose the children to both the business and the technology sides is what motivated SAP to be part of this programme.”

Maryam Gambo Zakari, chief executive officer of the Dynamites, the winning company, said that the ‘JA Company of the Year Competition’, has the made her an entrepreneur and has also removed the fear of unemployment after university graduation from her. “The programme has opened my eyes to the fact that no market is saturated and that any market can be broken into with the right product and services. With the knowledge acquired so far, I can start-up a business on my own without the help of anybody,” she said.

Olamiposi Ajayi, president of Enden Enterprises Product from Redeemers International Secondary School, Maryland, Lagos said that the programme has taught him the important of team work and time management as well as how the real business world is like.

KELECHI EWUZIE