Innovation for Africa Universities 2021
Innovation for Africa Universities 2021
The British Council has officially announced the projects that will comprise the inaugural Innovation for Africa Universities (IAU) programme 2021. Henley's partnership with Lagos Business School and Semicolon Africa in Nigeria has been selected as part of the programme.
The aim of the programme is to develop Africa-UK university partnerships. Our project is specifically looking to address issues of youth unemployment in Nigeria and is called Bridge.
We wanted to address the question How do we bridge the gap with what we are doing from an academic perspective, to what the industry needs? We plan to open up innovation, and get our students to work through challenges facing society. We also are teaching creative minds how to monetise and commercialise their passion into a livelihood. Our two strands of teaching are thus innovation and entrepreneurship, both of which Henley and Semicolon can speak volumes to.
We sat down for a few minutes to ask Jean-Pierre Choulet (Vice Dean, Africa and Director, Development & Alumni) more about Henley’s exciting new project.
Could you tell us about the partnership with Semicolon and Lagos Business School, how did it come about?
The Innovation for African Universities project was an opportunity for us to strengthen our existing relationships we have built over the last few years with friends and colleagues at Semicolon Africa and Lagos Business School.
What is the objective of the Bridge project?
We are going to demonstrate that training in the latest advances in digital skills can be combined with a high standard of management education to leverage the capacity of young entrepreneurs, in order to take their business ideas to the next level and reach investment-readiness.
What outcomes have we seen already from this partnership?
Following on from the announcement, we have already begun delivering activities as part of the Bridge project.
So far we have:
- Trained over 50 young entrepreneurs in Nigeria by improving their business acumen and entrepreneurial spirit, with Dr Adeyinka Adewale (Henley) and Dr Adun Okupe (Lagos) delivering the courses.
- Ran a masterclass on “The Importance of Design” involving an industry meet and greet for those in the local area, focussing on design as a key pillar of customer centricity.
- Most significantly, we have launched Semicolon Ventures. After three years of delivering training courses with Semicolon Africa, we are delighted to announce that over 200 completed our programmes. Semicolon Ventures is the next evolution of this model, where we host those who completed their training more than three years ago and whose businesses have reached a certain maturity. Here we help accelerate the growth of their idea, and have been equipped with a $1 million fund to support their development.
