S4S Nigeria

the client

The Department for International Development (DFID), Federal Ministry of Finance Nigeria, The World Bank.

The Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria (YouWiN) initiative is the largest business plan competition in Africa, with the key objective of encouraging and supporting aspiring entrepreneurial youth in Nigeria to develop and execute business ideas that will lead to job creation. The Programme is a collaboration of the Nigerian Ministry of Finance, the Ministry for Information and Communication Technology, the Ministry for Women’s Affairs (2012/13 only) and the Ministry of Youth Development. The initiative was supported primarily by the Department for International Development (DFID), the World Bank, and the Lagos Business School.

the brief

The main objectives of the programme were:

• Attract ideas and innovations from young entrepreneurial aspirants from Universities, Polytechnics, Technical colleges, and other post-Secondary institutions in Nigeria
• Provide a one time Equity grant for 1,200 selected aspiring entrepreneurs to start or expand their business concepts and mitigate start up risks;
• Provide business training for aspiring youth entrepreneurs spread across all geo-political zones in Nigeria
• Mentoring
• Encourage expansion, specialization and spin-offs of existing businesses in Nigeria

• Enable young entrepreneurs to access a wide business professional network and improve their visibility.

our solution

During You WiN 2012, School for Startups (S4S) conducted a train the trainer programme for 30 local mentors.

A programme manager was employed on the ground and 30 local mentors were hired to support the 1,200 award winners. Each mentor were themselves entrepreneurs or practicing professional so had the ability to drawn upon their own experiences when mentoring.

Every mentor received live two-day training on the S4S 10 Questions business modeling method and related business skills areas, as well as Socratic methods. In total 30 mentors were trained each based within the six geo political zones were trained during May 2012.

These trainers were then distributed throughout Nigeria to provide training and mentoring to the 1200 entrepreneurs.

the outcome

• 80% of participants were satisfied or very satisfied with the training they received at the live workshops
• After attending the first bootcamps, 75% of participants reported they would now focus on or do something differently with their customers and the market
• After the cashflow session, 60% of participates reported they felt very capable to now build their own cash flow statement.
• After the selling workshops, 93% of participates reported they would be implementing a new sales strategy in their business.
• After the training on hiring 90% reported they would implement a new hiring process
• After the training on measuring team performance, 86% reported they would implement a new measurement process