The Bridge Program

Since independence, slow economic development has plagued Nigeria. As a result, unemployment remains high - especially for recent university graduates (40%). This is caused by two factors: poor quality of the graduate skill sets and the limited quantity of opportunities to build rewarding careers. 

Per the National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria's graduate unemployment rate stands at 29%, compared with the national rate of 17.5%, due to poor quality of graduates and a limited quantity of opportunities to build rewarding careers, as the mismatch between demand and supply of skills is 60.6%. 

Frequent strikes, outdated curricula, and years of government underfunding have resulted in a broken higher education system, causing the "skills gap." As a result, 20 million youth will enter an already oversupplied labour market over the next ten years, with a disconnect between what is learned in class and practical on-the-job skills.

In the short term, we exist to help graduates bridge the gap between the basic capabilities their universities provide and the 21st-century skills employers require. Over the long term, we exist to create a network of capable, ethical, cross-disciplinary changemakers who can create economic opportunities at scale.

By helping graduates acquire these skills, we aim to improve their employability and increase their chances of securing meaningful and rewarding jobs. This benefits the graduates and the broader economy, as more skilled and productive workers can help drive economic growth and innovation.

Product Demo

The Bridge Program is a two-year, highly selective fellowship that identifies and develops change-makers to build Nigeria’s leadership capacity across critical sectors of the economy. The fellowship begins with a four-week intensive boot camp followed by two years of active programming and a lifetime of access to training, mentorship, resources, and opportunities to forge a successful leadership journey. The Bridge Program currently serves 250 fellows across six cohorts.

Selection Process:

We have a robust and rigorous selection process, with a philosophy of identifying candidates based on their leadership potential and career motivation, not just academic success.

● Complete the online application, including essays describing past achievements, motivation, and future goals and ambitions.

● Selected candidates are required to complete a video interview

● Final 100 selected candidates speak to a member of the Afara global selection panel and the founder to further assess fit

● 65 fellows are selected out of c.1k applications 

Our four-prong model includes:-

Foundation: At this stage, our curriculum exposes students to a pedagogy grounded in the principles of inquiry-based and experiential learning, designed to develop 21st Century skills, build independent thinkers and deep learners with the boldness and agility to create a new world. The program curriculum comprises six pillars – entrepreneurial leadership, communication for impact, data and decisions, technology and digital innovation, and political economy. This phase begins with the training on the residential boot camp. Then, it continues successive online training in the two-year period, including a series of self-paced courses, guest speakers, panel discussions, etc.

Support: Building on the foundations, students then become part of a global peer network that connects, co-creates and generates collaborative solutions to address and enable inclusive solutions to some of the world’s pressing problems including energy poverty, health access, financial inclusion, and food sustainability. 

We have co-created a peer collaboration platform “Student Paddy” that takes an unconventional cross-cultural approach to accelerate our mandate. 

Experience: We understand that opportunities to practice are core to powering careers. Therefore, we enable students to apply concepts learned in the classroom to real-world experiences and to solve complex problems through internships, leadership simulations, and idea labs. After the residential boot camp, Afara arranges a virtual career fair to match fellows with opportunities to intern with start-ups and corporates. This feeds into the start of their short-term employment, entrepreneurship, internship or higher education plans.

During a virtual general assembly at the end of their short-term engagement, fellows present their capstone project outcomes and a final assessment to gauge the candidates' growth in fundamental skills from the baseline assessment and also their portfolio of work. 

Transitions: We run a peer mentorship model and source mentors from top companies such as McKinsey, Microsoft, Merck, and Reckitt to help students transition to their first careers by facilitating access to further education, venture creation, and first employment.

Lifelong Fellowship Community: After successfully completing the program, fellows become part of a strong network that reinforces, supports, and connects them to opportunities at all stages. 

When we launched in 2014, we were driven by a bold vision for a globally competitive and prosperous Nigeria. We wanted to harness the ingenuity of young people by enabling them to establish viable businesses, build resilient institutions and communities, and foster a vibrant economy. We wanted to promote unity and change our nation's value system, so we sought a diversity of thoughts and experiences in our application process. Our programs have accepted fellows from all regions, our 250+ fellows are evenly split by gender, and we have reached over 100 of the 180 universities.

The quality of university graduates in Nigeria is below that of their global peers, which has hindered economic growth for decades. Students are not challenged to think independently, solve problems, and innovate. Therefore, there is a disconnect between what is learned in class and the practical on-the-job skills.

Our pedagogy focuses on inquiry-based and experiential learning to ensure fellows are globally competitive; we layer connections to the right network and access to global opportunities to accelerate their journeys. An example of our success is that we now have seven fellows at Bank of America in the UK from 1 in 2020. Our fellows with well-funded startups hire other fellows. Evolve Credit's success is enabled by ten fellows, including the founders.

The outcomes of the Bridge Program include

• Increased fellowship size from 10 to 65 per year in 2022

• 3,300+ applications received since inception (c.900 applications in 2022, highest ever) 

 ● 100+ universities (out of 180 in Nigeria) reached across 26 states in Nigeria 

• 250+ graduated fellows in an active and supportive community 

• ~90% of fellows have completed multiple internships 

• ~50% of our fellows have been exposed to global opportunities (including full-time jobs, Masters, PhD, and  global fellowships) 

• ~10% of our fellows started ventures, participated in accelerators, or received funding from global VCs 

As an investor, operator and entrepreneur on the African continent, Lara has struggled to find capable knowledge workers to run and grow businesses. Our programs identify potential early and radically alter fellows' career trajectories and earning potential. This not only provides economic opportunities for them, their family, and their community but also builds industries and enables a strong Nigerian economy. 

The US higher education system contributed majorly to Lara’s success. It allowed her to bloom as an independent thinker and presented with a lot of access and opportunities. She wanted a part of her story to be replicated for many more young Nigerians without the physical migration.

She started her journey as a social entrepreneur in 2013 at African Leadership Academy (ALA). She was the growth-stage CFOO and interim CEO over a six-year period. Under her leadership, ALA went from being cash-strapped to becoming a sustainable institution with commercial prowess and raising its first endowment. She brought in corporate rigour and transparency. She built commercial products and achieved incremental sustainability.

She thought she could use these experiences, tools and foundations to build a solution at scale in Nigeria.

In addition to Lara, we have 10 global leaders on our Advisory Board with experience in the education field and in building businesses in the African continent including 6 Nigerian leaders such as Akintunde Oyebode - Commissioner of Ekiti State, all of whom support us on strategic decisions. Throughout the years, we are also supported by industry veterans in the education space such as Veda Sunassee, CEO African Leadership University and Faith Abiodun, Executive Director, UWC International - who supported us as consultants for program design. In addition, we've hired four young leaders we've supported through our programs to ensure we stay close to the community we serve. As Program Managers, these individuals have a significant say in our design process and have helped develop and lead other programs e.g Daniel Alumona developed what we now know as Transitions in 2021. 

Our 2022 Bridge boot camp received 90+ NPS, with these students saying it was the most transformative experience they have had. We envision reaching 3k students in the next five years by scaling our Bridge Program.

Past fellows serve as peer mentors to current fellows to help them transition to sought-after local and global careers, graduate schools, and ventures. They recommend new fellows to the program based on success stories.

Finally, we also partner with various actors in the human and economic development value chain – universities, government, funders, and corporations and deliberately employ young graduates from around the world who are vested in finding a solution – to achieve our audacious goal - to develop the future–fit and globally competitive graduates at scale for the development of Nigeria.

Our immediate success factor is to be able to connect talents who have gone through our program with quality jobs (MNCs, Startups and other Corporations), ventures and graduate schools and do it it at scale. 

• We are trying to understand the business model for Transitions (matching our fellows with their peers and at scale)

• Help us with our storytelling to unlock funding in the US 

• Increase our brand awareness (become household name) in NIgeria without breaking the bank

• Access to decision makers from top companies to increase the opportunities for our fellows 

• Receive monitoring and evaluation support to build a solid foundation for impact measurement 

The current colonized system of education creates workers who are themselves dehumanized. Dehumanized people are more likely to dehumanize others. The quest for societal validation seldom allows students to think critically, follow passion or learn skills.

The future of work is evolving, dynamic and lies at the intersection of various fields. Hence, 21st century skills including cognitive, interpersonal and leadership skills are crucially important in today's job market. Our 4-prong model leverages from skill building to providing support and building the network to provide real-world experiences and finally transition to their first meaningful careers.

Our model does not eliminate the existing model of university education. Rather, it acts as a support to boost the current system to produce better results and produce a happier society and enhance meaningful career opportunities for the generations to come by building change-makers across several sectors. We provide the platform to potential leaders of tomorrow from diverse backgrounds to harness interdisciplinary skillsets, leverage the power of focus and enhance productivity as well as real-life experiences of the career paths and chances to implement those changes that we dream of. A future investment banker, an aspiring education minister, a motivated film director or a potential chef - are all part of the same cohort.

Leveraging technology, our peer collaboration and transitions platforms connects Nigerian university graduates to their peer mentors across the globe for rapid development, co-creation and knowledge exchange and discovery. Thus, our approach to mentorship is a bit different from traditional models of mapping to mentors who are expert in their fields. We map our students to their young counterparts across the world who are early in their careers as well and been through a similar journey 2-3 years before.

Our impact goals for the next year is to enrol 250 new fellows into the program and to complete successful transition of all 315 existing fellows into their first careers. We also intend to increase our application pool to 5000+ (increase by 3x) by next year and reach more than 150 universities in Nigeria. We have not yet partnered with any company for job placements of our fellows. Accessing our skill building trainings, resources and leveraging our network, our fellows have organically been placed in global MNCs, local corporations or went on to pursue higher education at graduate schools or created ventures.

In the next 5 years, we intend to:

Objective 1: Scale The Bridge Program to enroll 3000 fellows in 5 years by hosting multiple cohorts round the year

Objective 2: Reach students from all 180 universities across Nigeria in 5 years 

Objective 3: Extend our offering by including non-university students (students in NYSC year - a one year mandatory service for Nigerian graduates)

Objective 4: Support our Bridge fellows to create job opportunities for 1 million youth in Nigeria

Thus, our long term intention is to create a network of capable, ethical, interdisciplinary leaders and changemakers who would be socially conscious and motivated to create economic opportunities at scale.

We are changing lives. Fellows like Victor Ojo credit his experiences with Afara as the impetus to his founding FavDoctor - a social enterprise that provides low-cost professional medical advice via text message. Another fellow - Samuel Adewole - founded Nile Farms (formerly Volta Irrigation), an award-winning irrigation and hardware systems start-up. He won several pitch competitions, including the Hult Prize Rwanda National Winner, CU New Ventures Social Impact Winner and the MIT Water Innovation Prize Winner. Victor and Samuel are two of many fellows whose trajectories have been radically altered because of their time with Afara. There are many such stories as that of Victor or Samuel. We are willing to re-write stories of many such potential change-makers in the next few years by helping them to grow holistically.

The Afara Initiative believes that impact measurement is critical in getting the program managers to move beyond  the mere intervention of doing good towards creating valuable and accountable impact. In order to understand  progress and achievements, assessments and demonstration of quantifiable value creation is equally important. The Afara Initiative will hire external Monitoring and Evaluation consultants to conduct impact assessments at the end  of each cohort and at the end of each year. However, presently, due to funding constraints, the program managers conduct impact assessments internally.

Quantitative Indicator 

Outcomes tracked

Reach

# students reached and applications received - Outreach to target population

# universities covered in student applications - Geographic Reach

#applications received from non-university students - Access to non-university students

Outcomes

Learning outcomes - leadership, communication, technical and digital innovation, career readiness, political economy -Skill mastery

NPS of the bootcamp and post camp active programming- Program Delivery and Effectiveness

# ventures launched, % ventures which raised funding - Entrepreneurship

# applicants pursuing higher education - Higher education 

# internship and project offers converted to full-time  opportunities -Employment opportunities 

Others

# start-ups, corporations and university partnerships signed - Demand for talent 

Skills assessment scores at beginning and end of program - Engagement and learning outcomes

# internships and projects conducted - Career track progress during program

Number of applications received for males and females - Gender Diversity

Number of states covered - Geographic Diversity

In addition to these measures, Afara regularly collects qualitative data from current stakeholders to assess the  effectiveness of its programming. 

Impact: To create a network of capable, ethical, interdisciplinary leaders and change-makers who would be socially conscious and motivated to create economic opportunities at scale.

Rationale:

Due to the skills gap, graduates struggle to build rewarding careers and businesses can't find the talent that they need. Poor education contributes to Nigeria's poor innovation record and slower growth in the startup ecosystem compared to other emerging economies. Unemployment is also at an all-time high at 40% based on Nigeria Bureau of Statistics. Our primary research of more than 300 students indicate that along with skill-building, lack of resources and networks with the right people often hinders the process.

Life-long learning :

Challenges - Nigerian universities do not teach 21st century skill sets required in the ever-evolving 'future of work' of today

Activities - Residential bootcamp focused at skill-building, post-camp skill building continuance - on topics such as 1) entrepreneurial leadership 2) effective communication 3) technology and digital innovation 4)data and decisions 5) career readiness 6) political economy

Short-term outcomes - Ready to build a career in the dynamic career fields of today and bridge the gap between the basic capabilities which universities provide and the 21st century skills employers require

Long-term outcomes - Thrive in the career fields of today by continuous upskilling and leveraging from the fellow community 

Access to Network, Resources and Information:

Challenges - Nigerian undergraduates do not feel empowered to compete with their global peers due to lack of access to resources, network and information

Activities - Co-created a global peer collaboration platform "Student Paddy" which enables the youth to connect with their global peers across campuses all over the world

Short-term outcomes - Build connections with motivated peer groups in similar journeys and become future-fit and globally competitive

Long-term outcomes -  Connect, co-create and collaborate on this platform on humanity's most pressing issues and create meaningful solutions

Work Readiness:

Challenges - Nigerian undergraduates seldom get the opportunity to participate in global competitions or have access to innovation labs or quality internships and access to mentors who have been through similar journeys recently - all of which would help build their portfolio of work and provide access to the job world

Activities - Partner with companies/ventures to work on design thinking projects during bootcamp, fellows intern post the bootcamp and present in the general assembly and fellows are mapped with peer industry mentors through our transitions platform 

Short-term outcomes - Internships, apprenticeships, increased participation in global competitions - helping a new generation build their own portfolio of work

Long-term outcome - Transition into first careers : jobs, ventures or graduate schools by assisting in their portfolio of work model

Socio-Economic Transformation:

Challenges - Quantity of opportunities are limited due to various factors

Activities - Promote innovation, venture creation

Short-term outcomes - Fellows begin their venture journeys and are supported through our network

Long-term outcomes - Fellows create economic opportunities for others at scale and also motivate, inspire and mentor the communities to follow similar paths.

We have co-created the Global Peer Collaboration Platform "Student Paddy" and it is achieving product-market fit through its unique AI-driven technology engine that drives sticky users, by matching peers accurately, enabling project collaboration, and sharing of relevant information. 

The digital platform is enabled through an app that connects future industry leaders in Africa to their peers around the world to enable them to collaborate, co-create and transition successfully into highly sought-after careers. 

The platform enables personalized learning journeys reinforced by peer-to-peer interaction and powered by an AI technology engine, and the project helps test the commercial viability by getting perspectives from a diverse cohort of residents from different sectors and countries. 

We are also in the process of building our Transitions platform - creating a platform using a matching algorithm which would help our Fellows connect to relevant peer industry mentors and at scale leverage connections to transition into their first careers.

When we launched in 2014, we were driven by a bold vision for a globally competitive and prosperous Nigeria. We wanted to harness the ingenuity of young people by enabling them to establish viable businesses, build resilient institutions and communities, and foster a vibrant economy. We wanted to promote unity and change the value system of our nation and so we sought diversity of thoughts and experiences in our application process. Our programs have accepted fellows from all regions, our 500+ fellows are evenly split by gender, and we have reached over 100 of the 180 universities.

Our Global Peer Collaboration platform supports knowledge sharing, collaboration, and co-creation amongst Africans and their global peers to enable inclusive solutions to humanity's most pressing concerns including energy poverty, health access, financial inclusion, and food sustainability.

Thus, we are building products which are inclusive towards communities and we ensure equal representation across geographies, gender, universities and field of study in our cohorts.

The entire revenue model for The Afara Initiative across all programmes include:

Pathway (1-year career acceleration program) 

• fee for service 

• subsidised rate for the pilot at $250  

• 250 scholars in the initial on-campus pilot plus 22 scholars for the current virtual pilot; we will test different pricing throughout 2023.

Bridge (flagship program) 

• Free for fellows but funded by donors 

• 250+ fellows 

Transition and Global Peer Platform to third parties 

• 1% of future revenues will contribute to financial sustainability

Our revenue model includes a combination of donations and grants, revenue generated from our other product streams such as Pathway and Transitions. For revenue generation of our other products, we operate through a mix of B2C and B2B2C models (where we proceed through university partnerships).

Our major expenses for the Bridge Program involves Employee and Consultant Costs, Bootcamp Costs, Technology and Infrastructure costs and marketing costs. Our program continues to be completely funded by donors.

Our other programs generate revenue streams which allows us to cover our other expenses for the organization as well. We are building a financially sustainable and robust business model through our other programs which would allow us to also to support The Bridge Program from the revenue generated along with donations and grants.

We are currently supported by funding through HNIs, family and Corporate donations and founder loans.