Tribe would come in . The Colour of skin will come in . Age will come in . Religion will come in . Then of course there will be the issue of godfathers and patronage to the party owners ....
This is the biggest problem I see with the continent . Because we are by nature consumers , we do not know how to develop resources and so we wait for finished products to consume . Obama was 47 at the start of his presidency and Rishi Sunak has become prime minister of the United Kingdom at the age of 42 making him the youngest person to ever occupy that office .
We need to be careful as we celebrate finished products because it ’ s an indictment against us because we have the raw material for the very finished products that we emulate . As a continent we are so fixated on finished products from abroad . We export gold to import gold watches and jewellery . We export crude oil to import refined petroleum . We export steel to import cars . We sometimes export geniuses to import fools .
Think of the number of Kenyans or the number of Nigerians making waves abroad . Why are they not at home ? Some of them started with menial jobs that they would never do here and they grew their way to the top . Even at the top , some of them get paid way below their counterparts there . On the contrary , expatriates are hired all over Africa who get paid many times what the Africans are paid . Would it not have been easier to just pay our own what we are ready to pay the expatriates ? It is all rooted in the love for finished products .
When I started The Street University it was to harness the potential of young
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There is a discipline that comes from working and earning money that can never be found in those who just come into money such as lottery winners or people who suddenly come into a big inheritance . people in high density areas . This has since morphed into a program for young people everywhere . The program is in 3 phases and each phase goes on for a month .
The first phase focuses on Mindshift and General Business Education where students are exposed to an intense month of mind renewing and personal development . This is a combination of live webinars and pre-recorded sessions from entrepreneurs and business leaders from different walks of life and with different experiences to share . The recorded sessions are customized and exclusively done for the Street University .
For the second phase , students who are successful with phase 1 move on to phase 2 where they learn the dynamics of group work . They are given tasks where they actually get into some business endeavours . Students are grouped together in no particular order and given a very small amount of money to trade with . This is to test their ability to translate what was learnt to practice . It also tests their ability to work in a group , their thought process and their leadership skills .
This phase gives them a practical exposure to wealth creation . For the September class there was a group that was given Kshs 1,000 and based on what they were taught grew it to Kshs 28,000 in the first week and Kshs 58,900 by the second week . By the third week , they had grown the money to Kshs 77,000 and by the end of one month they had grown it beyond Kshs 100,000 . Now we have helped them to form a company and they will be able to employ others . This is the simple model and it is working . Young people are being taken out of poverty and unemployment .
The ability to manage and grow resources is never a function of the size of the resource but always a function of a well trained and creative mind and this has been our focus . We work on the mindset and everything else takes care of itself .
In the third phase , students are now grouped according to their interests . Those who want to go into media for instance are grouped together . Those who are interested in beauty are grouped together and so on and so forth . At this level they are paired with mentors and instructors who will help them to understand the business side of their dream and who will help them build targeted capacity for their areas of interest . They are also paired with people who will help them set up the right structures and processes and help them with all the legalities of their business .
After this there are 3 options for the students . First , they are helped to start their own business . Secondly , they are absorbed into some of the existing platforms that we have through our networks - from media , to beauty , to farming , to public speaking and consultancy and finally , we serve as the link between them and employers who require well trained people in different areas .
We are doing this because we believe in production and not just consumption of finished products . When in future my students become the next big thing and they become great people , yes , we will celebrate them and identity with them . However , they will know and we will know that we were part of the process that made them and we did not just claim them at the trail end as finished products .
That said , hearty congratulations to the new prime minister of the United Kingdom . We are indeed proud of his Kenyan roots . We however need to ask ourselves some very deep questions . For many years , governments across the continent have embarked on lofty youth empowerment programs . For starters , what the African youth need is engagement and not empowerment as many of them are already empowered . Many of them are quick to point to thousands of young people who are graduates with no jobs . They have been empowered but not engaged .
What is the problem with a lot of economic empowerment programs ? They focus on the economics . This sounds like a contradiction but it is indeed the reality .
Many years ago I was a researcher at the Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies in Nigeria and there was a very big debate going on as to whether Nigeria should take a loan from the International Monetary Fund . Just before this could be finalized the gulf war broke out after Kuwait had been invaded by Iraq triggering off Gulf war 1 .
The result of this is that the prices of crude oil skyrocketed and Nigeria supposedly made $ 12.5 Billion . The amount they wanted from the IMF was $ 2.4 Billion . After the gulf war , Nigeria ’ s economy dipped and was in a worse state than it was before the gulf war yet the nation had benefited from the war in great measure . From this we could come to a very unusual conclusion that almost sounds like a contradiction - that money is not the solution to a financial problem .
A lot of people live in the deception that once they get money all their problems
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