Connecting the skilled economy

Improving the creation and access to opportunities across emerging markets by the recognition and development of skills. 

Identifying what you know and being visible within your local and regional professional community are major needs for developing economies, just as education and collaboration. Following the crucial adoption of mobile technology across emerging markets such as Africa or Asia-Pacific together with their demographic characteristics, we provide a solution for the productive economy to connect and grow.

The solution is a skills-focused, localized online platform for the productive population across emerging markets. Making use of game mechanics and community-based trusting mechanisms we aim to provide an environment fostering collaboration, education, and good practices.

The solution is innovative given the context in which it plays. Across the African continent, connections among professionals and entrepreneurs tends to rely on word-of-mouth and not making use of dynamic, online communication (LinkedIn has a 3% penetration across the continent). Apart from the exercise for someone to recognize their skills and be able to connect and collaborate with other people around their community in very intuitive and dynamic manner, we believe our solution is innovative because of the use of game-based learning for developing and testing someone's skills via their smartphone. 

Our solution relies on the use of smartphones and connectivity. The adoption of smartphones and internet penetration across Africa are things that we want to build on.

We are currently on-boarding professionals to the platform, and the goals for the next 12 months are the following:

• Grow our user base across major cities in Africa (Dakar, Abidjan, Accra, Lagos, Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Yaoundé, Kigali)
• Test our game-based learning tools for soft skills
• Consolidate a team based in Dakar, Senegal
• Create a relationship with employers, creating an interview questionnaire for specific roles, available to our users in the platform. 

As we have designed the platform to be very graphical and intuitive, while relying on the community to upvote/recommend other profiles, I believe our value comes from the connections we create locally, the dynamism and the transparency we bring to the trade-offs among 3 stakeholders in a society: training/skills development centers, professionals/entrepreneurs, employers. Closing the circle and facilitating how populations enter the workforce and develop their career, being responsible for the development of their economies.

We on-board users by going to the skills development and training institutions (universities, higher education, vocational & technical training centers) and speak with the teachers so we offer our platform as a end-of-course exercise to allow the students to clearly identify and categorize what they know so they can enter the workforce in an informed and focused manner. Our platform is also being pitched in different professional associations as to gather professionals around an intuitive, local and useful platform so they communicate and rank each other.  

We are currently testing usability and on-boarding test users. Our first target to onboard are the people sitting in the national databases for employment (28'000 people between 18 and 30 years old just in Dakar, that have taken the time to bring their physical documents and be able to sit in a database waiting for someone to go check for a specific profile) 

With our platform we expect to be serving around 30'000 people in Dakar alone by the end of the year (3% of the population in Dakar). And in 3 years we expect to be serving more than a million people across the continent, with our presence in major cities driving economic development to the continent. 

Software development, game-based learning development, user experience design and business design is the most relevant experience the team has. However, during the next 12 months we are looking to grow and consolidate a team comprised of people from different African countries so to dynamize the understanding of the given context and be able to iterate solutions faster and better. 

We have different monetization strategies. 

1. Fee paid by employers: given then user base in the platform we will provide access to a detailed database of the users in the platform that have chosen to be visible to employers for potential employment opportunities. 
2. Fee for screening candidates: employers and others interested will be able o screen potential candidates in different ways and paying a fee for such services. 
3. Localized advertisement: the ability for organizations to advertise in the platform. The nature of the advertisement will be closely watched, as the intent of such advertisements is not "to consume" but "to grow" (so it could be from events targeting professionals, to online learning courses or others). 

Because it is a marketplace connecting innovators with resources to solve Global Challenges and I certainly need a lot of good resources that have a drive for tackling big problems. I have seen past projects and believe I could be selected to be part of the network and growth with you all.

The two majors are:

1. Ability to adapt to the given context
2. Ability to scale

Both barriers will be overcome thanks to hard work but also with the necessary help of people involved with Solve so to think big while solving small.