Learn2Earn

Through a web and app-based platform we provide a robust skill learning path to help young unemployed school leavers become self-employed, have a viable side job and attain financial stability.

Meet Learn2Earn. The first skill acquisition web and app-based platform for young African school leavers who have no job or are underemployed and underpaid. This platform collates free and accessible content over the internet and organizes it in a way that the user can learn a skill, with all its aspects thoroughly and learn how to make money with that skill.

Leveraging existing technology such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, as well as insight from professional technical educators, we can put together lessons based on the interests of the user, from beginner to advanced. The user would also learn of ways to monetize that skill and receive notifications of opportunities relating to his/her skill.

Learning never ends and innovation is necessary for sustainability. Each user's profile gets updated with new information regarding his/her entrepreneurship career. Information such as new methods, new income sources, new skills, knowledge etc. Through this, the user can always adapt to an ever-changing market.

The platform encompasses both jobs that are carried out remotely, and jobs that are done physically but can be perfectly learned remotely.

NB: The interface pictures are internet samples to explain the concept

What you see above is a picture of the location where a job interview was conducted by the Nigerian Immigration Service in 2014. The picture alone tells you that something is seriously wrong. Seven people who may or may not have been captured in this picture, but were at the location where the picture was taken, died due to a stampede. The root reason for their death was unemployment, else they would not be gathered at a stadium on that fateful day. Most of the people there that day were young school leavers. The vast majority of them never got the job.

In 2014 the unemployment rate in Nigeria was at 9.7%. Currently, it is estimated at 32%, the fourth-highest in the world. About the same percentage of the workforce aged 15-24 years are unemployed. Over 20 million people. Job growth has not been able to keep up with population growth, so jobs are getting scarcer.

This is why the majority of my colleagues feel so uncertain about their future. It is widely perceived that without personal connections, you'll never get a job. Getting into the university itself is very difficult due to the sheer number of people applying. Paying through it is financially tasking, getting out and not finding work is the height of it.

Unemployment is directly linked to hunger, poverty, crime rate, economic recession, etc. It impedes almost all the UN SDGs. Therefore for a society to move forward, it must handle unemployment.

This solution aims to impact over 50 million school leavers who are either unemployed or underpaid. Most of them are twenty years and above. Let's consider the case of Usman, Abiola and Emeka. Usman is done with secondary school, but he doesn't have a job yet. He wants to start graphic design, but doesn't know how to go about it.

Abiola managed to have a job at local factory after studying engineering. But he is paid so little. He wants to make snacks and sell, as a side gig, but his salary cannot afford him catering and business training.

Lastly, Emeka is in his senior year. In the next few months he will be out of school and is afraid of being unemployed. He searches the internet for something he could start doing with his personal computer. He gets bombarded with so much random information that he becomes confused.

This solution helps the three of them understand what viable skills align with their interests, gives them knowledge on how to start doing them and earn money, and helps them constantly improve.

Usman can use Learn2ern to pursue a skill path of graphic design, he can then design for clients either online or physically. He will also learn to market his work anywhere.

Abiola can learn how to bake and prepare snacks. He would also learn how to combine his side gig with his main job and do both well.

Emeka's confusion can now end on stepping into the platform and getting asked about his interests. He would see skill paths he has passion for and learn how to be self-employed.

I came up with this solution by being in the problem, facing the problem itself, and talking with my colleagues who face the problem with me. We all are seniors and soon to be school leavers, aged twenty and above. We are all faced with the situation. I met up with some earlier graduated students, talked with them and understood their challenges. It's all the same story, getting employed in Nigeria is hard. When you find, the salary is inadequate.

From our discussions, my experiences and observations, accessible guide and accelerator to self-employment, solves the problem.

I have identified four key areas where school leavers are most interested in learning skills. These are Artisanal and Repair skills, Tech skills, Business skills, Agricultural skills.

The concept is selected because the project has been completely designed and envisioned on paper but no prototype has been created

Our technology is powered by the internet, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and connected devices.

We deliver the content to customers over the internet who view it on their personal devices, either on the web or through an app.

We use AI to crawl the internet, identify free and relevant content, group similar ones, so we can organize and present it as a robust course. Through that approach, we can have quality YouTube videos, weblinks and other content about the same thing, in one skill path, arranged according to complexity. This is easier than having humans manually search for information.

Currently, it is still a concept. User-centred design is the next step we're taking, from which we will create a minimum viable product.

We plan to create and use the minimum viable product to a community of about one thousand people, who would help make input to it. After that, we launch the product by the first quarter of 2023. By the last quarter of 2023, we hope to reach at least 10,000 people.

In 2022, we hope to arrive at a prototype using User-centred design, then we create the product with a community of 1000 people. By the first quarter of 2023, we would take the product to market. By the last quarter of 2023, we hope to have impacted at least 100,000 people who have learnt new skills on the platform, 20,000 of which have put these skills to work and are making a substantial income of at least four dollars a day.

As the product goes to market, we would simultaneously sponsor targeted ads to the relevant demographic. the youths make up the vast majority of over 50% of internet users in Nigeria. By informing them of the intention and benefits of the app, we hope they become our customers.

By listening to our community, we hope to keep iterating the product so that it would focus on its intended impact.

We hope to measure our impact by collecting feedback on the platform. We would also collect user stories and advice on what skills they think is relevant as well as how to improve the platform generally.

We hope to also collect metrics on how people interact with the platform and how long they stay on it. We would use these data to enhance the product.

We would also track unemployment data and economic metrics such as proportion of self-employment in Nigerian employment data

We would track news and article coverage on our solution.

We would ask users for confidential reports such as daily earnings, then seek to optimize the skill paths to improve skills and eventually income

Our next step is to design a user centred prototype. This likely would be non-interactive, and would not cost a lot of money. The main financial barrier will be in designing the minimum viable product which would be a functional website and app. The main product taken to market will be based on this.

I and my colleague going to work with me would design the MVP, but the main product will be professionally carried out by experts who will build on our products.

Currently, I'm the only one working on the solution. This is because it is relatively new. I have a friend who is a senior as well. He would soon join me in the project

I'm majoring in Electrical Engineering while also doing an online associate degree in Computer Science. I have done an internship with a startup that sought to bring service-based internet access to maritime vessels in West Africa. Also, I was a semi-finalist at the UK Commonwealth Hack the Planet competition which sought ideas for sustaining our oceans.

I'm fully aware of the situation I and my colleagues find ourselves in. After so many extensive discussions of the scary topic with friends, we came to the conclusion that self-employment is the pathway to our financial independence in Nigeria. However, how to go about it in a cost-effective way is quite difficult. Anything can be learned for free on the internet, only organization is lacking.

One one of my last discussions with a colleague before writing this, he told me he found it difficult learning online and I asked why and he didn't know. Initially, I feared my solution wouldn't serve him and others like him, but when I talked about the lack of structure in using just search engines to find knowledge, he suddenly pointed at me and said " Exactly, that's it".

None for now. We are still at the concept stage