Technology and Innovation for Prosperity

Due to COVID-19 pandemic most of small scale businesses have been throwned out of business because of physical restrictions set by government. Alot of aspiring entreprenuers also have put their plans on hold. This has been made worse due to lack of incorporating digital technology approaches for their business growth. In view of this, we are equiping small and aspiring businesses with free programming skills to enable them explore digital solutions to enable them remain in business. This solution can be scalled globally and help small businesses grow and employ alot of unemployed people. At the same time the programming skills are not only limited to business growth, but can also be used in finding solutions to various social ills faced globally.

Due to corona virus pandemic many 50% of businesses in malawi have been forced to close, this is due to most of these businesses in malawi rely on daily physical sales. Malawi is already one of the poorest country in the world as such the physical restrictions have just added on the already existingeconomic problems. In fact, only 50% of businesses are operting because they rely on digital technology. At a global level, this problem has also affected alot. In fact, According to the world bank, before COVID 19,it was estimated that 1 billion young people would start business in the next decade but only 400 million would succeed. But due to this pandemic recession will increase uncertainity around 600 million youths. On the other hand, this is also posing a serious threat on generation of employments. In our view, those business that uses digital approches will survive the recession that those that dont use them. This calls for a serious investment in digital technology to help small scale survive in business. As well as enable aspiring entreprenuers achieve their goals. 

To solve this problem we are providing free trainings to small and aspiring businesses in programming to enable them explore digital solutions to enable their business growth and in turn leade to generation of more employment. The knowledge and skills in programming will enable them create digital solutions to promote marketing of their products and its delivery  as it will enhance a strong connection with consumers of these products.

We are doing all our trainings online and to address accessibility and affordability of the trainings, we are leveraging on social media platforms to teach the people. Each training is conducted in a period of three weeks and this time we have started with website development

We are targetting youths aged 18 to 30 of which 55,6% have tertiary education and 44,4 have secondary level education, and 83 percent of them are males and 17% are females. These are the youths with start-ups businesses both in idea stage, growth and fully operation stage. 

To understand their needs to leveraged on the data that was collected through a survey conducted by the Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (MCCCI) in march 2020. This survey uncovered alot of problems that these startup businesses are facing, of which mainly is the lack of use of digital solutions to promote business growth and this is caused by lack of digital technology literacy. As such we are trying our best to make a tailored training that enables each on of them to learn and practice digital technology that fits his/her business.

Teaching them programming will enable them launch online marketing and linking their businesses with prospective customers. This will enable them to revamp their sells and in the long run provide them a sustainable market for their products. 

Our solution is helping the youths who are aspiring entreprenuers continue launching their businesses using digital technology approach as there are physical restrictions set due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Not only, that the youths can also consider website development as one of their business ideas to launch. Our solution will also enable small businesses explore digital solutions for their business growth. So the solution is increasing access to technology to small and new businesses by equipping them with programming skills.

Considering the fact that there are alot of restrictions to govering of people we decided to bring a solutions that will work online. In view of this we decided to preverage on social media to train our target beneficiary of the solution, thereby utilising the existing technologies (social media) to bring a positive change in promoting social economic development.

Currently we do not have compititors and if we are to compare with others, we can compare with the University of Malawi Polytechnic and Mzuzu university which offers courses in Information and Communication Technology. Unfortunately these university are not teaching students anymore because they are closed due to the COVID 19 pandemic. They have not even yet implemented online classes but they have communicated to students that they will open in january next year. 

On the other hand, in the Technology and Innovation for Prosperity, we are leveraging on existing technology to train our targets and not the physical approach. In short, we are telling people to use digital technology solutions in business while training them through the same digital technology for free.

This project use coding using diferent programming languages such as HTML and Javascrip in creating digital technological based solutions for businesses.

As on the other hand, for easy access we are leveraing on social media where our target beneficiaries spend alot of their times. 

As much as we want our target beneficiaries to specifically applly the technological skills learnt in thier profitable businesses we also understand that they are able and can also apply the knowledge learned into no for profit ventures like ours where they can actively participate in solving various social ills in their communities.

Developing an effective web presence is imperative for sustainable business growth. While small businesses may be concerned about their social media pages, if their website does not appeal to their audience, their digital marketing efforts may go down the drain. Taking this fact into account, future-minded companies are now increasingly investing in web development so they can comfortably meet the needs of their tech-savvy consumers (https://www.reachfirst.com/web-development-a-powerful-tool-for-business-growth/).

As on the other hand, Social media and technology are integral parts of daily life, and integrating the use of these into the classroom is more natural than before, given how acclimated many students are to them.Each social media platform offers many different ways to be used as the classroom for holding live lectures. Infact, according to SPROUTSOCIAL, social media allows for more e-learning opportunities as well. As remote jobs and online classes are becoming more popular, training students to work from a distance is an important lesson, and social media can help with that (Available online on:https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-for-education/)

As part of inputs we are using social media platforms to train small scale and new businesses in digital technology for free. After the end of these trainings we expect these businesses to create websites and other digital platforms that will enable them increase their accessibility to prospective customers. In so doing they will survive on the market place as they will not fully rely on physical means to conduct their businesses.

To ensure that our target beneficiaries understand what they are learning we auto-tuning the practical sessions to specific business needs of every participants.

In the long run this will bring an era of digital markets that will lead to growth on businesses thereby leading to creation of more employments for the people.

In 2019 we trained 240 malawian youths in business and entreprenuership. And this year, 2020, we have so far trained 200 smale scale and new businesses in digital technology. Our goal is to provide solutions to what the society desperately needs now. Last year lack of involvement of the youths in business and entreprenuership was highly manifested in malawi for that we had to train the youths in entreprenuership while this year lack of use of digital solutions for business has been highly manifested as such we are training these small scale and new businesses in digital technology. By the end of this year we want to reach out to 1500 youths and in five years time we will have trained one million youths using diferent platforms at the same time.

From next year we will explore diferent problems that we in which we will also start training people how to deal with them. A special consideration will also be made to women of all productive ages to increase their participation in economic development of their country. We will be rolling out atleast 20 different courses at the same time using different platforms. This will enable us to reach out to one million malawians in five years time.

We also have plans to extend our training at a global level using different platform to reach vulnerable groups. We will also make some emphasis in solutions that will promote sustainable food productions and enviromental management. This will reach to 10 million people globally. 

Currently financial barriers are limiting our capacity to reach out to as many beneficairies as possible. Because we are supposed to hire different experts of different fields to train the peopl. Even if our team is committed to providing these trainings using different professional knowledges that we have, this is not enough to enable us implement our solutions due to financial challenges.

Since we are a non for profit organisation, we believe that grants from different organisation will enable us overcome these financial barriers.

In view of this, the solve community can help us link to grant providers or volunteers that will be very useful in implementations of our projects.

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8 people are working on full time.

1 person is working as a part-time staff

1. The executive director, Alick Israek Kamanga, is a holder of bachelors degree in business management so he understands business dynamics.
2. The fundraising officer, Tennyson Bilinkhinyu Nkhoma, is a Whitney Mac millan scholar at earth university in Rica studying Agriculture science, a Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) fellow. He previously served as a judge for Opportunity Desk Impact Challenge a global accelerator program organised by Opportunitydesk.org. He is also a website developer.
3. The deputy executive director, Patricia Kanjero is an industrial laboratory technician and a nurse.
4. Glory Mwafulirwa, a part time staff is a holder of a bachelors degree in Information and Communication Technology.

Other remaining 8 members have different skills and knowledge in business and entreprenuership, Information technology and public management. This fills us with a complete backup to help us deal with diverse problems.

Research Institute and Youth Empowerment seeks partners for mentoring and 

Our key beneficiaries are smale scale and aspriring businesses. We provide them access to technology through equipping them with skills and knowledge in digital technology. We provide this through leveraging on social media platforms to reach them because due to restrictions set due to corona viris pandemic. Our beneficiaries needs these skills to revump their businesses because they are not realising alot of profit and some are thrown out of businesses because they rely on physical sales. For aspring entreprenuers, this enables them to explore diverse of business ideas that require digital technology.

For now we rely on sustained donations and grants because we are non for profit organisation and we do not sell our service.

We are providing free trainings to small and aspiring businesses in programming to enable them explore digital solutions to enable their business growth and in turn lead to generation of more employment. The knowledge and skills in programming will enable them create digital solutions to promote marketing of their products and its delivery  as it will enhance a strong connection with consumers of these products. Furthermore, we are training aspiring entreprenuers in business and entreprenuers and technology to enable them start business and create employment.