We hope to become a key solution provider to Nigeria’s unemployment problem – Olayebi

Femi Olayebi is a self-taught, award-winning handbag designer, trainer, mentor, and the brain behind the eponymous FemiHandbags brand. Two years on, she started her company (My World of Bags Limited) and began slowly to navigate the design and manufacturing terrain, experimenting with the resources at her disposal, and gaining a reputation in the early years for the quality of her craftsmanship and her acute attention to detail. In this interview with IFEOMA OKEKE, she speaks on how she her initiative, Kafawa aims to address the skills gap across the manufacturing industry and improve youth employability-readiness.

Can you tell us about the Kafawa project and why you conceived the idea?

Kafawa is an initiative of My World of Bags Ltd., in partnership with Mastercard Foundation, that is aimed at addressing the skills gap across the manufacturing industry and improving youth employability-readiness.

My World of Bags is the parent company of FemiHandbags – one of the continent’s leading leather brands – and having experienced first-hand the lack of high-quality skilled manpower year-on-year, the company has been involved in training and up-skilling individuals interested in participating in the leather industry, over the past five years. Yet, the skills gap and the quality gap still remains.

In line with Mastercard Foundation’s goal to create 10 million jobs in Africa over the next five years, the partnership was formed, and in an effort to address the above challenge, Kafawa was launched. The word ‘Kafawa’ loosely translates to ‘establishment’ in Hausa – and as the name implies, the initiative is designed to establish a highly skilled generation of youth to enhance the quality of workmanship in Nigeria’s leather and non-leather industries, and begin to tackle the problem of unemployment across the country. With the immense potential of the Nigerian leather industry (predicted to generate up to $1 billion in the next four years), this initiative is designed to create a ready pool of individuals who will tap into that potential and bring it to life.

Since the launch of its pilot edition in October 2021, Kafawa has gathered and trained hundreds of young people – from underserved to educated youth in Oyo state (for a start) – in modern basic machine skills operations and hard-core leather production techniques. The program also includes a focus on much-needed soft skills, including business development and management, and self-development.

How well are you able to bridge the skills gap in the manufacturing of the products through the Kafawa project?

We have developed what we like to call a “living” curriculum – which means that it is extremely flexible and consistently adaptable to the needs of the industry. Using the Technical Industrial Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training (TIVET) standards, we have established partnerships with industry experts and partners who feed into the development of each course curriculum. Findings from our research activities provided additional insight into the skills gap across leather and non-leather industries. These findings were also incorporated into the design of the curriculum, in order to ensure that the trainees would be value-adding.

Having been a key player within the industry, My World of Bags recognises that being employable also requires that individuals have certain soft-skills such as design thinking,
workplace habits, emotional intelligence, customer service, communication skills and so on. This is why it has been imperative to structure all hard skills course curricula to accommodate for the inclusion of soft-skills training.
To allow for a ripple-effect system – where the graduate-trainees can go on to establish themselves and in turn employ more hands that they would go on to train, we also included an Entrepreneurship course facilitated by the Enterprise Development Center of the Lagos Business School (Pan Atlantic University).

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How are trainees selected for the training?

Our recruitment team conducts field trips to a variety of locations to identify prospective candidates for the program – from market visits to meetings with community leaders, to word-of-mouth communications by graduates, the program now has an almost 2000-person sized pool of applicants.
The criteria for selection requires that prospective trainees are between the ages of 18 and 35, in line with Mastercard Foundation’s definition of youth; the program also requires that prospective trainees have a minimum of Junior Secondary School Education, which is likely to provide them with the level of literacy that will be needed; and they also have to commit to being physically available for a period of 3 months. Once an individual meets the three criteria, our recruitment team then conducts a series of interviews.
These interviews test their basic knowledge on machine operations (if they have any), and assess their motivation levels, in order to confirm their readiness to join the program.

Could you share success stories from the training?

In the course of this training, many trainees have attested to going from having little to no machine experience to becoming masters in their own rights. Individuals who came from a broad cross-section of locations across the country – from one female trainee, the daughter of a seamstress who had always been interested in shoe making, who is now capable of producing quality slip-ons and sandals; to a male university student in the handbags and accessories class, who after two weeks of training began to make daily sales. According to one trainee, “things I could not [imagine] myself doing in years, I did in weeks, and it’s all thanks to Kafawa.” Additionally, through the placement aspect of the program, some of our trainees have been able to secure full-time employment positions, while a number of self-employed graduates have begun to receive contract offers. The goal of the training is to upskill young people to improve their ability to access employment opportunities and/or income sources, and through the results we have recorded so far, we can see that we’ve been able to do just that.

Do you think Kafawa would create a new generation of young people with a changed mindset and newfound belief that production, tailoring, and manufacturing can provide dignified and fulfilling work opportunities? How?

Absolutely! The Kafawa curriculum was specifically designed to include soft-skills that are structured to aid reorientation and a complete mind-shift. Courses such as
Self-Discovery/Development, Developing Interpersonal Skills, Business/Career Development and so on, open the minds of the trainees to understand the breadth and variety of opportunities that they can access with the skills they have now acquired. The program also incorporates coaching sessions to guide trainees in goal-setting, overcoming challenges, and leveraging their skills to access opportunities. It exposes them to the enormous potential that they can tap into, should they continue in the path of production, tailoring and/or even manufacturing as a whole.
We also invite guest speakers who are professionals and experts in the leather and non-leather design and manufacturing industry, to share success stories, and become prospective role models for trainees. Furthermore, the approach to training delivery is built on ensuring that trainee well-being is prioritised at all times, and that the environment is supportive of their needs. Their opinions are valued and prioritised, and any challenges they face are treated with the utmost importance. This creates a dignified experience, which trainees are now able to expect, demand and create as they transition into the workforce.
Kafawa offers a well-rounded training that recognises the importance of starting from a mindset point of view, such that when they graduate, they are more confident in their own ability, more excited about the prospects that await them; and most of all, they become strong illustrations of the dignity that exists in this field.

Where do you see Kafawa in the next ten years?

In the coming years, we hope to train tens of thousands of young people across Africa, such that, in ten years, Kafawa will be recognised as a fully accredited and certified institution with a manufacturing hub that has successfully created a pool of extremely skilled hands. Our aim is to create professionals and thriving entrepreneurs, who have in turn created opportunities for other young people within their various communities. We also hope to be defined as one of the key solution providers to Nigeria’s unemployment problem.

Are you open to further partnerships in this project?

Without the highly-empowering partnership with Mastercard Foundation, Kafawa would not have been able to achieve the level of reach and impact recorded so far. Therefore, the importance of partnership to this program cannot be overstated. It is as a result of partnering with established training faculties across different focus areas, and industry partners who support our work placement programme, that we have been able to execute the training
program at the level that we have. We are confident that the more partnerships we are able to establish – in expanding the program’s visibility, reach, and the quality of knowledge that is being passed across.