Innovation Fellowship Program

In Kenya,many young people are stuck in job application doldrums.  The answer to this problem is entrepreneurship. However, our education system is not geared to prepare the youth with the mindset and skill to be entrepreneurs in the 21st century. And thus many ideas do not reach commercialization due to lack of support, execution know-how and the right mindset.

The Innovation Fellowship is the answer to this as we provide the young people with an opportunity to work on well vetted projects following Bill Aulet's disciplined entrepreneurship model. This allows them to build entrepreneurial capacity and execution know how.The goal is to have more young people move from ideation to commercialization in their work. Thus creating employment for themselves and others.

If scaled globally, especially in third world countries it will see creation of more job opportunities.

In Kenya, it is estimated that 38.9% (2019 census) of the youth are unemployed, and 3.4 million youth have joined the labor market between 2014 and 2020 (Endeavor report 2015). Kenya will need to create 3.9 million new jobs to cater for this influx (Endeavor report 2015). In granular that is about 600,000 jobs per year. This however is not a reality.

Many young people have turned to entrepreneurship but due to lack of support, execution skills and mindset most fail.

The society is risk averse and thus many families do not support their young people in entrepreneurship  as it is not an assured path of success. This could also be explained by the fact that there is a high dependency rate and thus parents seek to be taken care of by their young ones once they are through with tertiary education.

The education system is also not geared to equip the young people with the right mindset and execution knowledge to be successful entrepreneurs.

The Innovation Fellowship Program by Impact Africa Network provides a cushion for young people to be able to emerge as entrepreneurs with a high chance of success.

We provide 12 month innovation fellowship to recent college graduates giving them the opportunity to work on well vetted projects under the guidance of a leadership team and mentor network. This is to ensure that the young people tap into the innovation opportunity as Africa is the next innovation frontier.

The Innovation Fellowship follows Bill Aulet's disciplined entrepreneurship model helping the young innovators follow a step by step approach in their projects to ensure high chances of success. 

The projects seek to provide software solutions to market problems such human resource, payroll etc.

We work with young local talent between the age of 20 and 25 who are recent college graduates.

We carry out a survey to understand their interests in career development and entrepreneurship and what support they require.

Their major need is financial support so as to focus on building solutions. The Fellowship caters for this by giving the fellows stipends during their time at the fellowship.This, coupled with providing access to a network of business leaders and curated content addresses their need in information to move forward with building solutions and becoming entrepreneurs.

In our local context, young people are marginalized by different factors when it comes to venturing into entrepreneurship. These include: lack of bootstrapping capital, lack of experience and knowledge. Our solution; The Innovation Fellowship Program; seeks to address the above to remove the hindrances in having the young people participate and venture in entrepreneurship. This results into creation of employment for the young people.

In our local market, incubators and accelerators work with ongoing entrepreneurs with ongoing ventures. There is a very high percentage of potential left out because most young people do not know where to start from. And this is the target audience that the Innovation Fellowship program seeks to serve.

More and more potential could be unveiled from young talent with a little guidance and knowledge.

The Innovation Fellowship program builds and/or relies on software technology. Most of the enterprises/projects by the fellows are software based. Providing software solutions to market problems such as payroll.

The current projects/software projects are still at an early building stage.

In the next 10 years we look to produce 3 early stage startups per year and have at-least one scale up.The aim  is to produce 10 scaled up companies in 10 years creating 10,000 jobs.

According to the World Bank Survey in 2013, scale ups in Kenya created upto 72% of new jobs

Currently serving 25

Will serve 40 in one year

Will serve 217 in 5 years.

In the next year we seek to work with 40 fellows working on 7 projects and spin out at-least 3 early stage startups.

In 5 years, we seek to work with 217 fellows and 56 projects.

The goal is to produce:

• Innovation leaders who can be leaders in all settings and can provide solutions in corporates.
• Sound early stage startups gaining traction and creating employment.

Lack of funding.

Macroeconomics.

For lack of funding, we are building a robust fundraising database. This ranges from foundations, development institutions, successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and other institutional partnerships.

3 full-time staff.

The Founder and CEO has 15 years experience working with startups in Silicon Valley, and has robust experience on building technological companies.

The Head of Donor Relations has 5 years experience working with non profits locally on youth programmes. Has experience on non profit operations locally and fundraising.

The Innovation Fellowship work with young talent, creating an environment for them to build entrepreneurial capacity while at the same time creating early stage startups.

We do this by supporting the fellows with a market rate stipend while at the same time financially supporting the projects they are working on.

We also give access to a mentor network of business leaders for guidance.

The beneficiaries need the above so that they can focus on building enterprises without the distraction of their day to day needs.

The Fellowship is funded through grant and philanthropic capital and we have built a robust donor database for this.

However, in the long run the startups that spin out of the fellowship will give a small percentage of their revenue to the program to ensure its sustainability.

Lack of funding. By helping identify new funding opportunities.

Our fellows need software solutions support in terms of guidance on coding language and design as they build software solutions to market problems.

We need funding partners, identifying new funding opportunities.

We would like to partner with solve members such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Microsoft and Cisco who can help us scale our projects.

We would also like to partner with Delta Vs program for peer learning and bench-marking.

The Innovation Fellowship Program gives priority to enroll women as we realize that the number women in the frontlines of building companies is still low in our market. We do this by putting higher quota for women enrollment into the fellowship.

The fund will be used to support the women and the women led projects to ensure that they are successful and that the women come out as innovation leaders.

The Innovation Fellowship Program also ensures that the fellows acquire 21st century work skills such as entrepreneurial skills, problem solving, critical thinking amongst others. This ensures that the fellows are competitive in 21st century opportunities.

The fund will be used to facilitate their learning by providing a space, learning material, access to a mentor network and additionally fund their practical learning through projects.