Beyond Innovations Africa

The unemployment rate in Uganda is at a record high compared to other economies in the world. This has led a lot of good innovative youths wasting their lives through engaging in unscrupulous deals or opting to travel abroad to do petty jobs that add less to the attainment of their dreams. This is however an institutional establishment where the education system trains people for "White collar" jobs other than being job creators. We want to change this trend by engaging youths in an hands-on business program that will challenge them to put their knowledge and skills into viable business ventures that can sustain them and lead to creation of more employment opportunities for other youths. The ones that ran successful business models at our company will then be supported to operate a branch of their own in the names of Beyond Innovations Africa in a signed partnership.

Youth unemployment in Uganda stands at between 64% and 70%, and about 400,000 youths are released annually into the job market to compete for approximately 9,000 available jobs. About 30% of the youths who are institutionally qualified in Uganda are unable to find jobs, and the situation is even worse for semiskilled and unskilled youths. Youths who remain unemployed or underemployed and do not exploit their full potential, are often associated with high incidences of drug abuse and gambling.A research conducted in 2008 showed that 50% of the graduates who were employed had achieved their first employment placement through a personal contact, suggesting that 50% of the available employment opportunities are distributed ‘sociologically’ rather than meritoriously. On account of lack of social contacts in the labour market, therefore, some graduates find it particularly difficult to get into employment, irrespective of their university training. Most of the unemployed youths migrate from rural to urban areas for work, which negatively impacts on the social services sector in urban centres. Ugandan youths shun the agricultural sector, one of the biggest employers in rural areas, preferring to work in service sector jobs like riding motorcycle taxis (boda-bodas), or as low-wage laborers in industries. 

Selected number of youths will be enrolled in an incubation business training program where they will undergo three stages of development. The first is a six weeks training in Business principles, second a three months development and implementation of a business model and third, the development of this idea and support to the individual or group of individuals to open up their own stand alone business in any area of their choice in Uganda. We will save the successful business entrepreneurs from going through the rigorous and tiresome process of acquiring legal status by allowing them to operate under our licence until they gain the financial muscle to run businesses on their own. The youths will be given opportunity to develop ideas across the different sectors of the economy depending on their skills or professionalism and Beyond Innovations Africa will provide the working space for these ideas to be developed and for guidance, supervision and testing of the developed business ideas. Those businesses that attain the maturity level will be required to start a new training cycle of their own containing 20 youths. So our first 20 youths will have started 2,500 other businesses in a space of five years.

Uganda has one of the youngest populations in the world with roughly 70 % of the population aged under 25 years and 58 % of the population aged under 18 years. We target to reach up to 20 youths in our first Cycle for a period of twelve months. These will be selected from those youths who have migrated to Kampala city to search for employment as well as those who have chosen to stay in the city after their university or higher education studies to search for job opportunities. These will be taken through a one month skills and innovative idea search where they will be prompted to discover their potential and how they can explore it to change their current conditions and create a better future for themselves and the society. These will then undergo a business training with an inclination on each one's sector and business interest. And lastly these will start working on their ideas with supervision and later be supported to develop them into separate business ventures.

The problem of youths unemployment aligns well with the the dimension that looks at, "How can marginalized populations access and create good jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities for themselves". Also the target group is of those disadvantaged youths in Uganda who could not afford proper education or who cannot access job opportunities due to their family status in the country hence falling under the chosen dimension. The solution is about helping these disadvantaged youths become job creators and entrepreneurs. This makes the project well aligned to the selected dimension.

Beyond Innovations Africa is premised on a question that; What happens after creating the Innovations. We have seen many innovators come up with very good innovations but five years down the road those innovations stay in the places where they developed them and are not taken up by the communities or do not eventually benefit the society. We realized that most of the youths that come up with these innovations lack life and business principles to actualize these innovations into viable businesses or enterprises. We propose to create what we refer to as a SPIDER BUSINESS WEB, where youths are facilitated to develop their innovations, and are taken through business training to help them turn their innovations into viable business that create more innovations and business in a spider web model. There are quite a number of other institutions that are training youths to start up businesses. However, our approach combines both innovativeness and character development. We will challenge the innovators to develop their ideas with a business sense and also reminding them of their responsibility to see that their businesses create 20 more innovators or business owners. This way we challenge not only the cognitive domain of these youths but also their psycho-motor 

The Spider Business Web uses the behavioral technology. According to Woodworth (1945) , “Any manifestation of life is activity.” Knowing that behavior is the collective term used to refer to such activities, we utilize the behavioral technology to study our target groups and bring modification in the way they conduct themselves. We shall use life and business principles to shape the individual’s character into an entrepreneur, Innovator and educator. By the end of the 12 months cycle, the individual will be fully developed into a successful entrepreneur. 

Knowledge Acquisition Phase: In this phase the trainees will learn the business skills through discussions, illustrations and demonstrations given by experts. The trainees will be encouraged to gain a lot about the business principles and skills from the demonstration given by the experts and discuss and clarify each and every aspect of the program.

Skill Acquisition Phase: On the basis of the demonstrations presented by the experts, trainees will be requested to make micro-business projects, for practicing the demonstrated skills. These Micro-projects are in cycles and through guidance till the projects attain mastery level. On the basis of the performance of the trainees in their projects, guidance is provided for the purpose of change in behavior of the trainees in the desired direction.

Transfer Phase of Micro-Projects: After attaining mastery level and command over their business ideas, the trainees are supported to transfer to actual business sites of their own in any of the desired regions or districts of the country.

Activities
 
Training
Incubation
Interprise Development
 
 
Training Sessions in business principles and entreprise development
On-site mentorship, and ideas development
Facilitating trainees to establish own Interprises/businesses and training facilities
 
 
 
 
 
Outputs
 
Youths acquire knowledge in enterprise development, soft skills, management and social networking
Youths create mirco-business models that can be developed into self-sustaining businesses
A new breed of youths with novel thinking and business oriented minds
 
 
 
 
 
Short Term Outcomes
 
Trainees demonstrate ability to run successful businesses
Different scalable business models developed and tasted
Establishment of multiple businesses in different sectors of the economy
 
 
 
 
 
Long Term Outcomes
 
Trainees continue to mentor other youths to become business oriented innovators
Beyond Innovations Africa gains competency in developing youths into enterpreneurs through incubating their ideas
Multiple jobs created and improved quality of life for the youths

Our solution is seeking to reach out to 20 disadvantaged but innovative youths selected from the different Kampala suburbs. These will undergo a six months Business training program and thereafter another six months business idea incubation period. At the end of the 12 months, these will be facilitated to establish their stand alone enterprises and each will be required to recruit 20 other disadvantaged but innovative youths to undergo a similar training and mentoring cycle. We envisage to be reaching out to 400 hundred youths and 400 hundred businesses established in the second year and by the end of five years, this Spider Business Web model will have hit at least 2,500 businesses. This will lead to creation of over 50,000 jobs in a space of  five years.

In the first year, we shall concentrate on building 20 youths into innovative business owners. These will then graduate from the incubation center and be facilitated to start their own businesses. These will be required to recruit 20 other disadvantaged youths in their newly established enterprises to be undertaken into a similar 12 months training but majorly geared towards learning these businesses and be ready to create more branches of similar businesses. This will lead to close to 400 new businesses being established just in the second year with the first group.

Meanwhile, at Beyond Innovation Africa business incubation center, a new fresh breed of disadvantaged youths will be recruited to undergo a similar 12 months training and incubation cycle. With this multiplier effect we envision to hit up to 50,000 youths reached through the web with a similar number of enterprises and jobs created for the disadvantaged youths.

Our major challenge is the financial capital to kick start this brilliant business model. This idea is a a concept level and we hope to develop it into a replicable business model for the rest of Africa. This being the major constraint it affects our capacity to recruit the required technical staff as well as establishment of the required incubation infrastructure.

If we are facilitated with the initial capital, we hope to establish the infrastructure and as soon as we start operating we shall reach out to government institutions as well as other development partners for low interest loans to help us deal with these challenges as we grow into a reputable profit making company.

Currently we are five team members fully dedicated to work on developing this idea. But we we hope to recruit close to 10 more full and part time staff as as soon as we get the required initial financing.

We are a passionate team and we come from different backgrounds professionally but have faces almost similar challenges in the job market and are ready to use the lessons learned to apply this solution such that our brothers and sisters, that is the generation below us do not go through similar hustles.

We currently have none

We are both a business and a training company. The ideas being incubated are considered as business ventures for the company and the products developed by the different incubators at our company are sold for income generation to the company to ensure financial sustainability. Each incubator will be paid for their services for the whole 12 months they will be working on our premises. This will help provide jobs to these disadvantaged youths as we develop them into reputable entrepreneurs.

If we are given the initial funds to kick start our idea, we hope to develop business ventures through the ideas that are being incubated. These will be the initial financial sustainability channels. However, we shall develop proposals to be submitted to government programs that are geared towards developing the youths. We shall as well develop business plans that can be submitted to financial institutions that provide low interest loans.

Because we have a solution that we think will help reduce the high levels of youth unemployment in Uganda but currently lack the required financial muscle to kick start this business model. We are reaching out to Solve believing that our idea will be further developed and also supported by the wealth of business mentors and networks that are under Solve.

As a starting company we would benefit more from the the different professionals under solve to help in developing our business model. We would mostly appreciate if through this challenge we access our initial funding need that will help us kick start our idea. We would also appreciate it if we receive frequent monitoring and evaluation to always help us become better. And since this is a world wide platform, we would like to benefit from it by exposing our company and idea to the wider business community

Government bodies

MIT 

Financial institutions especially banks and microfinance

We are reaching out to disadvantaged youths and would like to develop them into successful entrepreneurs. Giving these youths an opportunity to develop their innovations and transform them into businesses will help create more jobs for the many disadvantaged but innovative youths in Uganda.