Africa Exchange Program

Addressing unemployment in Africa by allowing youth to access opportunities beyond their borders using tech.

Africa Exchange Program is creating opportunities for youth to contribute to building the Africa they want. We are developing the next generation of Pan-African leaders. We are implementing development blueprints like Agenda 2063 and the SDGs. We are not only bridging the skill mismatch but also increasing domestic tourism and creating a more united Africa. AEP is self-evident in three pillars; 

Partnerships between governments, industry and universities. Governments create policies, a conducive environment and identify tourist attractions and cultures they would want to share with the world, industry creates internship opportunities for the youth while universities and institutions of higher learning provide us with talent(youth) and also do Pan-African pre-deployment training.

Programs that allow youth to gain international work experience in another country, become and contribute to domestic tourism and experience new cultures.

Platform. Which is the technology we are using to have youth register their details and interest. We then use AI to match them with the best available opportunities based on their interests and qualifications. This means that from the applicant's end, they meet the minimum requirement for every opportunity they can see. Fursa, our platform also allows students to upload video resumes.

Africa is a continent of great inequality and infinite possibilities. Throughout the continent, talent is equally distributed but opportunity is not. Youth constitute more than 40% of the population. We have some of the most promising startup ecosystems in the world. Sadly, we still suffer some of the highest unemployment rates in the world with countries like South Africa at more than 27%. According to the Africa Development Bank, more than four hundred million youth are either unemployed or underemployed. The consequence of unemployment has been an ever-increasing crime rate and conflicts. A key factor for unemployment or underemployment in Africa has been the skills mismatch between University graduates and what the industry needs. Internship and attachments have proven to be a remedy to this. How then do we make them more accessible to youth? 

Secondly, in the realisation of a united Africa, we ought to travel more within our continent. We need to appreciate our rich cultural diversity and heritage. Domestic tourism in Africa is only at a mere 56% compared to a global average of 73%. The pandemic had us reconsider our key markets. Domestic or local tourism sustained the tourism industry. The lack of domestic tourism during such a time as the last 24 months suffers a huge economic blow to the tourism industry. The African youth needs to spearhead the use of the Pan-African passport to explore the continent to be better placed to address the challenges she faces.

Africana is a student of Linguistics and African studies at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. She was inspired by the story of Kwame Nkurumah to be a Pan-African. She loves her continent to death. She wants to understand it better. She wants to experience more than three thousand ethnicities. She is in her penultimate year of study. She is looking at graduating but two of her elder siblings are still unemployed because there are no opportunities where they stay. She hasn't gone for her internship. She is interested in a career at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. The UN needs international work experience. How does she get it?

Africana represents the millions of youth graduating from our institutions of higher learning without the skills they need to take on the available jobs. As a student myself, I came up with a solution to address the problems facing us. 

The target population are youth from underserved communities who lack the opportunity to get meaningful international work experience.

Companies offering internships are presently exploiting us with inhumane work hours and/or deadlines. Internships should be mutually beneficial. The conversation of whether or not they should be paid is open for discussion but we are calling on the industry to open up their businesses and help skill the next generation of Africans.

AEP through its partnerships will provide internship opportunities to skill the youth while allowing them to explore their continent, share their ideas and develop a Pan-African ideal.

We are engaging potential customers in a customer discover a program to understand the problem better.

We are constantly sharing our approach with stakeholders to get feedback and new insights. It's a continuous process. We are planning to have a mini-pilot program or a minimal viable product next year to understand the pain points that are still unforeseen and that might arise.

We are involved in youth employment seminars and career workshops where students get the chance to interrogate our proposed solution and give their suggestions and insights.

We have been able to share the idea with a couple of people and organisations. We got the opportunity to participate in a training organised by the Africa Union Commission that challenged youth to come up with creative and innovative solutions to the problems we face. We were among the three finalists from across the continent selected to pitch our ideas early next year at Expo 2020 Dubai. 

We are also building the platform to help us test it out and have a demo application process by early May. We are constrained in this regard as we still lack the resources to finalize it.

Fursa is a Swahili word that translates to opportunity. It is our main tech. The platform.

Fursa allows students to register their details. We are cognizant of the fact that the majority of young people are heavily using new social media for their day to day life. We are making it possible for them to upload video resumes e.g TikTok resumes, YouTube video resumes and any social media they can use to bring out their creativity. 

We are using AI to match registered students with the most appropriate opportunities. This means that the students get to see opportunities to which they meet the minimum requirements. 

Fursa will be available as an app, a website and since we are looking at making the program as inclusive as possible, we are looking at integrating a USSD version. Only 26% of the African population is connected to the internet. This means that more than half of the affected youth population lacks access to the internet. We are still researching the best approach towards the USSD platform and would highly appreciate technical help. Having said that, it is something we are passionate about seeing through.

Going forward, we expect to collect data from the youth we have placed and how they faired after the program. This will help us predict better the learning outcomes for millions of youth who get into tertiary education. We will have the data to better advise institutions on the courses and skills to focus on in training.

In the next year, we have three key milestones in our drive to create social impact.

We intend to onboard and train more than ten thousand students drawn from five pilot countries on communication, adaptability and job readiness skills. 

We are looking at onboarding three startup incubators/coworking spaces in each of the five countries to help us create a thousand internships with 10% of that being paid and 60% being reserved for girls and women. 

We intend to send a hundred students on internship opportunities abroad for two months. This is going to enable us to pilot the entire exchange program and identify priority areas and the things to improve on.

Our impact goals are;

Having more than ten thousand students being trained on job-ready skills.

Having more than a hundred international exchange programs completed.

Having more than 60% of our total participants being girls and women and equipping them with the right skills and training to take on the job market.

Successfully piloting our program and establishing partnerships with business communities across the continent.

The number of users on our platform.

The number of students who enrol for and complete our training.

The number of exchange program participants.

The number of companies and subsequently the internship opportunities they provide.

The amount of revenue generated from the business.

We lack the finances to fully concentrate on developing our platform. It could take us longer than planned without dedicated talent working on it.

We need the technical expertise to help develop and optimise the platform better and faster.

Marketing/brand visibility and business network introductions will enable us to set up operations in the five pilot countries.

We are aiming to have the social impact spread out in five pilot countries but lack the legal experience of managing these relationships and/or partnerships.

The impact we could have addressing unemployment among the more than four hundred million unemployed or underemployed youth in Africa and need help identifying the right business strategy to ensure that we generate enough revenue to remain sustainable and have a greater impact.

Jecinta Mwangi is a student at the University of Nairobi and has worked in a startup that is developing leading-edge technology-based solutions, leveraging the power of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to address the accessibility barrier for the deaf. Jess is adventurous and before embarking on this mission she travelled to different parts of the country to highlight the impact of climate change on communities in rural areas.

Joshua Nyagaka is responsible for developing the tech. He has experienced the underemployment pain firsthand. He is a graduate of Computer Science from the Multimedia University of Kenya and has in the past developed technology to help communities living in water-scarce areas have access to affordable and clean drinking water. 

Kairu Karega brings recruitment knowledge and is helping us design some of the training materials. He is working with a leading recruitment consultant and is also a digital communication student and strategist.

The University of Nairobi is helping us come up with the training materials and content to be used for the pre-deployment training.

We are also working with them to identify the trends in the employment landscape in the East Africa region.

We are pursuing a partnership with the African Union Department of youth and women to explore working relationships with the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement.

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Those who are not aware of their history are bound to repeat it. In many African communities, we have systematically disadvantaged women and girls. For us to achieve gender equality, we must intentionally empower women and girls in our society. In a continent where women represent more than 50%, it makes no sense that they are more likely to be unemployed compared to their male counterparts.

Women represent about 70 per cent of the world’s poor, earn 23% less than men globally, and nearly 60% of women work in the informal economy. In Africa, women’s participation rate in formal employment remains incredibly low, meaning they are earning less, saving less, and at a greater risk of falling into poverty than men. The gender gap is still increasing even though employment rates are rising. This is because men tend to benefit more. We ought to hire more qualified women. 

Hiring more women is a key step towards women’s empowerment and vital for working towards the goal of gender equality. 

That is why we are focusing on sending more women and girls on exchange programs. We are considering a business model that would allow us to send one woman foran a full expense catered for an exchange program for every two self-sponsored exchange programs. The cost will also be subsidized by part of our revenue, donations and grants from organisations and individuals working to significantly increase the number of women in training or employment.

In line with reducing inequalities, we are partnering with women and girls serving organisations to help us amplify and market our programs to the much deserving women and girls. 

We plan to use the Pozen Social Impact prize to provide scholarships for more women and girls to take part in the exchange program. We presently have no full-time staff but we have two of the three-member team as ladies. This prize will enable us intentionally hire qualified ladies and women into senior positions. 

At the Africa Exchange Program, we are aware of the historical injustices towards women and are actively working to empower more girls in training and have more women in employment. The Pozen prize will help us amplify our work and increase our reach.