Ever heard of the word Serendipity? Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines it as “the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable things not sought for.” This definition encapsulates my story with the Innovate for Africa program. It was another Monday, and I just finished my morning schedule when I faffed through Twitter and saw the promoted ad for Innovate for Africa. The previous week, I resigned from my job after five years, and five days after, I “serendipitously” bumped into the IFA application. The innovation readiness program will become one of the most engaging and inspiring learning processes I have undertaken and will expose me to innovative strategies that inspired me to engender new hope for myself and Africa. Sail on with me as I row you through one of the best learning experiences.
The Innovation for Africa is an ingenious strategy to liberate Africa from development backwater by leveraging youth to engage in design thinking processes to create solutions to Africa’s problems. The program encompasses a 4-week innovation readiness program where fellows would undergo rigorous training on Design Thinking, Personal Branding, Hard Skill Acquisition, and Strategic Analysis. The core values of the IFA are Innovation, Collaboration, Grit, Growth Mindset, and Inclusivity & Diversity. The training team consists of Harvard alumni and educators from Sloan school of management.
The four-week innovation readiness entails all the training modules. First, we started with the design thinking process, where we implemented the D-school bootleg design thinking process to empathize, ideate, and prototype a solution to a persisting problem. Then, we were placed on hackathon groups and made to engender the five principles of the IFA to create a pitch for the situation we want to solve. This process inculcated practical applications of collaboration, grit, growth mindset, and inclusivity on all of us. On the pitch day, a selection of Harvard graduates and industry experts were invited to moderate our presentation and judge our performance. My group promulgated the Agronovator, A climate-smart hackathon that will lead to Nigeria’s commercial agricultural revolution. Other groups presented unique and ingenious ideas that reinstated my belief that African youths can indeed create the Africa we want by 2063.
The program also fostered personal branding. This learning process helped me create my website and portfolio and gave me a better digital representation of my professional outlook.
The Hard skill lab was perhaps the most intensive and challenging aspect of the program for me. I nurture the aspiration to become a practicing spatial data analyst by 2021, and the program gave me an indoctrination into the world of a data analyst. We were given a real-life project with actual data to work on, and it was quite intensive learning and practicing concurrently. We were assigned mentors who are industry experts occupying supervisory roles in various industries to aid our process. My mentor has been extremely helpful and influential in my learning process. His efforts ensured that I had something to present to my client, and I continued maintaining my relationship with him after the program. The delegation of mentors to the trainees is another inventive approach by the IFA team as their inputs and recommendation fast-tracked our learning processes.
Now, let’s reflect on the exceptional individuals that I worked with during the program. But first, I make a caveat that everybody was excellent, and we all collaboratively created a creative atmosphere that was stimulating and exciting.
First, the IFA team, Margaret Wang! Wow! Her tenacity and enthusiastic approach to problem-solving and management are quite significant to the program. She possesses contagious energy of diligence, enthusiasm, and unwavering tenacity. Mary Nagel was also quite instrumental and inspiring as she always checked up on us and created that warm ambiance that made us seek her when we have issues. Omozusi Guobadia was also very helpful with feedbacks, directions, and instructions.
Now the fellows, Among many smart individuals, I had interactions and created working relationships with a host of my fellows, and I will detail their personalities in this section. First, Idara Uwatt! Phenomenal lady with a strength of 10! We met during the interview for the training and became instant friends. I call her Ms. Efficient because she gets things done! She is tenacious, dedicated, and goal-driven. Next, kamaldeen Adekola, We met in one of the group tasks. I noticed his unusual silence. I denoted that people with his form of quietude are usually the genius in the room, and I wasn’t wrong! Kamaldeen has a brilliant mind and is definitely poised for great things, and I will love to have him on my team in any project. Then, My Agronovator teammates, Ochanya Adah, is another quietly brilliant and insightful lady. I remember her having a meltdown after our first week and contemplating giving up. We all inspired and motivated her to keep going, and eventually, she was the brain behind our hackathon as she contributed significant insights that defined our pitch. Adeyinka Meduoye is that gregarious and effervescent fellow. He always exhumes positive energy that carries everyone along. I won’t forget his “we move” mantra in a hurry. Joy Chukwukere is also a brilliant lady with a happy aura and keen attention to detail; she sees that minute but essential factor that everyone else will probably miss. Other notable fellows include Sope Ogunlaiye, Archibong Akpan, Gbolahan Kolawole, and Otori Emmanuel.
Overall, the innovation readiness program engendered an invigorating spirit of creativity in me, and I am determined to keep the spirit alive. In the words of professor Lumumba, “We are all we’ve got, and we are enough for Africa.” I solemnly believe that if we could implement just 2 out of the 8 hackathon solutions we created, Nigeria and Africa will be better for it. There is more to be done, and like the program’s mentor, Margaret Wang, said, “This is just the beginning…”
