West Africa Activities: What we have achieved so far
Driving youth employment and entrepreneurship.
Our ultimate goal is to empower individuals to establish thriving businesses that drive the growth of Africa. This is achieved through strategic partnerships with leading higher education institutions and industry organizations at all levels.
Why?
Closing skills gaps to deliver job-creating businesses.
Research has shown that entrepreneurship is a promising solution to turn job seekers into job creators. Our challenge is to find ways to help Africa's enterprising youth create sustainable jobs. There are three main issues at the heart of this challenge: turning the many entrepreneurial activities on the continent into viable job-creating businesses, addressing the significant skills gaps among young African entrepreneurs, and developing better innovation ecosystems to support startups.
Entrepreneurship is becoming an increasingly popular choice for many young Africans, driven by three key motivations: the pursuit of decent income, the opportunity to tackle complex problems in a profitable manner, and the desire to create investable businesses. However, the lack of technical and business skills often proves to be a major hurdle for these aspiring entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, high-quality university education is not accessible to the majority of African youth, with less than 10% enrolled in post-secondary education. Consequently, there is an urgent need for validated and localized technical and business skills across the continent.
How?
Local partnerships for local solutions.
Henley Business School is collaborating with partners in West Africa to promote entrepreneurship among young people. We seek to improve access to reliable technical and business education through reputable institutions, as well as coaching and mentoring. Additionally, the Henley Centre for Entrepreneurship is conducting research on entrepreneurship in Africa.
Nigeria
- Semicolon Africa - an organization keen on building a tech-focused
- Lagos Business School
- Temple Management Company
- X3M Ideas
- Afrinolly Creative Hub
Togo
- Université de Lomé (Togo) - the development of the Lomé-Henley Institut Afrique-Europe de l’innovation et des métiers to elucidate Henley Business School’s ambition as a genuine African Knowledge Factory.
Benin, Sénégal, and Côte d’Ivoire
- Acosphere (UK based) to facilitate opportunities in Benin and other francophone countries.
What?
Our delivery so far:
➢ Nigeria Creative Enterprise Support Programme (NICE) 2019
➢ Semicolon Techprenuership Programme 2019 – 2023
➢ Ghana Creative Enterprise Support Programme (CESP) 2020
➢ Nigeria Creative Economy Catalyst – The Creative Village (MTN Yellow Star Reality Show Project) 2020 – 2021 – funded by the Grant Challenge Research Fund by Innovate UK
➢ Social Impact Through Entrepreneurship and Creative Economy Policy 2020-2021
➢ Gidi Creative Skills Programme 2022
➢ The Nexus Project (British Council Going Global Partnerships – Innovation for African Universities) 2020-2023
Henley Business School was selected by the British Council alongside its partner Afrinolly Creative Hub to deliver a two Entrepreneurship Programmes across Africa:
Nigeria Creative Enterprise Support Programme (2019) 54 participants
Creative Enterprise Support Programme Nigeria (2020) 60 participants
- Social Impact through Entrepreneurship E-Learning, Nigeria
- Creative Economy Policy E-Learning, Nigeria
The Nigeria Creative Enterprise support (NICE) project was an initiative of the British Council and the Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) which focused on the development of talent and innovation within Fashion and Film sectors of the arts and creative industries, a fast-growing and very visible sector in Nigeria. 54 creative entrepreneurs were empowered with skills and knowledge for building and sustaining profitable businesses. It featured a cross-disciplinary curriculum, as well as taught and practical sessions that addressed the salient issues commonly faced by budding entrepreneurs within Nigeria’s creative economy.
Additionally, the joint delivery of the Creative Enterprise Support Programme (CESP) in Accra, Ghana (2020) benefited 60 participants.
Other projects
Semicolon Techprenuership Programme - Semicolon Africa is an organization keen on building a tech-focused and future-ready workforce (talent and businesses). Since 2019 Henley has been collaborating with Semicolon Africa to deliver Business Management training to young techprenuers. So far, we have graduated over 500 participating youths across 17 cohorts.
Nigeria Creative Economy Catalyst - The Creative Village MTN Yellow Star Reality Show - Afrinolly creative economy project - The project was designed to search for, discover, nurture, expose and launch music talents (youths) in Nigeria. Discovered talents were assembled in an incubation hub where their skills and talents are honed through masterclasses, coaching, mentoring and practical sessions by renowned lecturers, and distinguished music artists. Through the partnership of Henley Business school, Afrinolly Creative Hub, and Berklee College of Music USA, we delivered training on Creative Entrepreneurship to 11,898 participants.
Gidi creative skills program - A program designed to train 200 students (early entrants to the creative sectors) with job readiness skills and understanding. Henley delivered a course on Business Acumen and Building the Entrepreneurial Mindset for Creatives. Our aim was to develop and strengthen the skills, instincts, abilities, processes, and resources that the participants needed to adapt, and thrive in a fast-changing world. We graduated 153 youths from this program.
Nexus Project - Launched in 2021, the Innovation for African Universities (IAU) project is designed to strengthen the Institutional capacity of Africa – UK Higher Education within the entrepreneurship ecosystem and increase their capabilities to address youth unemployment and underemployment in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. So far, over 70 youths have been trained by the partnership in Phases 1 and 2 combined. Now in Phase 3 with 45 beneficiaries enrolled, the project (Nexus Plus) is enhancing young entrepreneurs’ abilities to deliver societal and economic impact by deepening their business and professional capacities to run sustainable enterprises. The implementation of Phase 3 began in January 2023. Find out more about the Nexus Project on our hub page.