The Harambe Enterpreneur Alliance! The IDP Foundation can’t stop talking about this amazing group of talented African social entrepreneurs. In September, we traveled to Rome for the annual Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance Forum. It was here that we announced Harambean Mr. Obinna Ukwuani, Founder & CEO of New Economy Skills Accelerator (NESA) by Makers, as the winner of the inaugural IDP Foundation Changemaker Fellowship.

Based in Lagos, Nigeria, NESA is a mission driven organization determined to equip young Nigerians with the skills that enable them to participate in today’s digital economy. The specialized training is aimed to provide participants with the most relevant skills in order to seek gainful employment opportunities in tech or high-growth entrepreneurial activities. By tapping into the mass of unskilled workers in Nigeria, NESA maximizes the human capital that goes mostly unnoticed.

When choosing the Changemaker Fellow among the many extremely talented Harambeans, we searched for an organization that has the potential to create systemic change within the education sector in a scalable and sustainable way. With NESA’s growth and success over the past few months, they have showed us just that. Since their inception in early 2017, three cohorts of students have completed the full time, 12 week course and they will be welcoming their fourth cohort in February. Increasing their enrollment even further, NESA began a part-time program in December as well.

Makers (the parent company of NESA) has been scaling alongside NESA. Utilizing a team led by Mr. Ukwuani and MIT students, Makers just launched Rwanda’s first robotics boot camp in partnership with BK Techhouse and the Bank of Kigali. The boot camp has brought together 40 boys and girls from around the country for a 3 week, 100 hour camp and has received a great response from everyone involved.

With NESA by Makers business model, they are already sustainable and profitable while creating long lasting impact. Potential students are consistently reaching out to get in on this valued accelerator program and graduates of the program have only positive reviews to share. We look forward to following the progress and success of NESA and Makers and the outstanding leadership of Mr. Ukwuani!