PR TIMES AFRICA PRTimesAfrica (March 2016) | Page 64

GRADUATEPRO UNVEILS
#AFRICABIGGESTBOOKPROJECT
To Tackle Unemployment On The African Continent
L
ike any community, there are challenges. Look closer
and you’ll see that a great many of the people you pass
are young – 60% of the population is under the age of
25 – and they are out on the street in the middle of the day
because there is literally nothing else for them to do. . They
have completed their education. Some have even received
advanced degrees. Not because there are no jobs, no. With
a bunch of printed resumes yet no job offers knocking.
It is obvious that the job market has become incredibly
competitive. Leaving unskilled or rather unprepared gradu-
ates with no jobs. Having visited 32 states across Nigeria in
2009 up until 2011, looking for young people to work with.
Naomi Lucas, Founder – Graduatepro has identifies this
struggle from the other side as well. The constant struggle
to hire the right hands for the available jobs has been very
difficult. You would think, as an employer, that there is a
wide pool of talents out there till you run into a coma just
because of those ‘skills and attributes’ listed on their CVs.
Unemployment situation in Africa is real and tragic.
In her words “I understand from the employee and employ-
er perspective that the skill deficiency that we’re facing and
the issues that we have cannot be solved in a day or two.
We just need time with these young people to be able to fix
the problem, and that’s what we want to do. I believe there
are jobs, nobody should deceive you that there are no jobs
but we don’t have the people to take them”
Having discovered these problems, pathetic situation and
the urgent need to address this issue, Naomi Lucas set
up Graduatepro with the sole aim of bridging the gap be-
tween graduates and today’s workplace. Using the power
of audio-visuals, young people’s attraction to the creative
industries and the current pervasiveness of Internet and
mobile technology. She strongly believe Graduatepro re-
verse the scourge of unemployment in Africa, one graduate
at a time simply by eliminating three barriers to learning
we have identified: Location, Money and Convenience. Our
goal is to make sure every graduate has access to opportu-
nities for self-improvement irrespective of his/her location,
how much they have or what time of the day it is. We don’t
think that’s a tall order. Really.
“I felt that I needed money to do what I wanted to do, but
I found out I could start from where I was” she said. “So I
set up a blog where I started talking about the things that
I felt young people should know to help them excel in the
job market. There was also an email where I encouraged
young people to send in their concerns and all that. That
email address became like a hub. Looking at all the issues
that young people were dealing with, I realized this was a
full time job. That was when I began to think that there has
to be a way to just get to this people fast without having to
wait for when I have money”
That thoughtful moment steered the launching of an au-
dacious audiobook project aimed at addressing unem-
ployment among Africa’s youth population. Titled “I’m A
Graduate, Now What?The typical question asked by fresh
graduates plagued by a sudden wave of insecurity after
graduation.
It’s a first of its kind project that deals directly, collective-
ly with the issue of unemployment from the perspective
of the graduate leveraging digital technology.The tone is
informal and the language is simple and easy to compre-
hend.The book is intended to be the definitive companion
to graduates who have schooled and hope to work within
Africa. It lays bare all the nuances that drive the African job
marketplace; one to which the graduate is often new and
inexperienced. It deals with the psychology of employment
from the perspective of the one who gives it and the one
who seeks it.
Graduatepro strongly believes in the idea that the solution
to unemployment is in changing the way youth are educat-
ed to better prepare them with the skills that employers are
looking for. And yes, ensuring that students have the right
combination of soft skills and job-specific competences to
meet the needs of the job market is a critical part of ad-
dressing this issue.
The book specifically aims at addressing unemployment
64 | PRTIMES AFRICA MARCH 2016