A typical Nigerian who goes through all forms of Education including Tertiary Institutions would basically come out to be less innovative and want to follow a path that people before him/her followed. For example, you go to school, you graduate with a Second class upper/First class, next you’re looking for Internships in banks and Multinationals and also planning to join the daily 8-5 job routines like many other Nigerians. Innovate for Africa has been able to see this as a problem and I’m privileged to be among the first set of participants to run the Pilot session.
It was an amazing, intense, resourceful and an “I wish it would never end” 4 weeks of Brainstorming, teamwork, project management and many more practices during the IFA program. Right from the orientation in the first week, I was blown away by amazing minds from Harvard and MIT putting us through on how important it is that we are all aspiring innovators because the world needs us more than ever.
We were taken through different steps of learning ranging from Project management to Personal branding, ability to understand problems using Design Thinking, how to create a Strategy down to even having a Hackathon which enabled us to have a firm grasp of what we’ve learnt in the past month.
It was more of a new experience to me because it was the first time I was collaborating with people online for the first time and we were able to work on projects together as a team, bringing in diversified wealth of knowledge from different aspects and departments of studies and trying to inculcate all our ideas together to bring a solution that would best solve our problem statement. It was an experience of a lifetime. One major challenge I had was basically internet issues which I think we need to focus on in Nigeria because technology will be the new norm in the nearest future and we need good internet to sustain the use of it.
One major Key takeaway I took was how we were able to completely break down a problem which involved Healthcare in Nigeria due to the pandemic, we were expected to bring new ideas around how Healthcare solutions can be easily disseminated in Nigeria. Our actions were to build a prototype of an app that would better solve the Healthcare System and also cut cost. This would result in making lesser cues in hospitals, reduce the amount of waiting times and even make it easier for patients to get consultation from the comfort of their homes.
Another interesting part in the experience was the fact that we got to listen to lots of Guest speakers who are already professionals in many emerging fields due to how innovative they have been. My personal Favorites were George Xing(Head of Analytics, Lyft) and Clement Kao (Founder Product Manager HQ). These guys made me understand how important data is and how you can apply innovation to be able to create better solutions that would change the world. I also enjoyed hearing Gbenga Oyebode(Founder, Aluko and Oyebode) speak about how there’s always opportunities even at times where things seem hard. Innovation would bring solutions to those problems causing the hard times too.
In conclusion, I wish the experience never ended and I would encourage more youths to embrace the need to be innovative as it’s the key to Major success in the future and would help to curb the problem of unemployment. I really look forward to exploring more of my innovative side in the future by solving most problems that we face here in Nigeria and also make it possible for other upcoming innovators to learn with ease from steps I would have taken.
The great accomplishments of men have resulted from the transmission of ideas and enthusiasm.
- Thomas J. Watson.