Are Nigerian youths a ‘lost generation’… or ‘Generation Enterprise?’

Three years ago, Business Day was invited to the US Consulate in Lagos for a special workshop combatting youth poverty and unemployment in Nigeria.

The distinguished host committee included officials of the United States Foreign Service, Public Affairs Section and Nigerian civic leaders Yemisi Ransome-Kuti, Dr. Muyi Aina, Kemi Sokenu Morris, and Modupe Eka. The speakers included high profile representatives of the Lagos State Government, including the Minister of Science and Technology, the Permanent Secretary and Chairman of the Lagos State Ministry of Special Duties, and the Director of Job Creation for Lagos State. Attendees included representatives of the Tony Elumelu Foundation and 60 Nigerian CEOs.

But the stars of the day were former “street kids” from Alimosho.

In front of the assembled business and government leaders, they pitched ten businesses that could grow into strong local brands and create jobs, not only for themselves but for other youth in slum communities.

These youth were formerly unemployed and living in poverty in the Alimosho area. Even after graduating from vocational training programs run by the Ministry of Special Duties, they had still been unable to find jobs in a neighborhood that featured a massive trash dump site, homeless migrants, informal housing, and months without power.

Instead of languishing in poverty, the youth had launched high-growth community businesses in partnership with Generation Enterprise, an NGO that partners with low-skilled, at-risk young people in Nigeria’s least developed neighborhoods.

Generation Enterprise is the name of this youth-run NGO. But it could also be used to describe the cohort of youth making an impact through entrepreneurship all over Nigeria today. Thanks to the growing “Silicon Lagoon” tech hubs (e.g., Co-creation and Wennovation hubs) and national business plan competitions like YouWin, new businesses are disrupting the way we find jobs (Jobberman), make payments (Pagatech), enjoy media (iROKO), and shop (DealDey, Konga, and Kaymu). 

What makes Generation Enterprise the NGO stand out from the pack is its focus on inclusive growth. While businesses and incubators power ahead, the NGO reaches out to tap the energy and ambition of the oft-overlooked young people in society’s lowest economic strata.

Generation Enterprise businesses launch in places like Agege and Ajegunle in Lagos. They mobilize entrepreneurship amongst formerly homeless youth or corps members in the Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme, Africa’s largest workfare (work + welfare) program. Their top 25 investees have increased their average incomes 13 times above what they were earning before the program, lifting themselves out of poverty and homelessness, and creating a way out for 56 others through the new jobs they’ve created in their own communities

In our new series, Business Day catches up with the youth of Generation Enterprise – the at-risk youth who become business leaders and employers, as well as the committed team of young people from Nigeria, the USA, Switzerland, and India who launched this organization out of Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton business schools and companies like KPMG, McKinsey, the IFC, and Google.

We will examine the struggles and successes of Generation Enterprise’s portfolio companies, which it creates and tests in collaboration with teams of youth in low-income communities. We will learn about the value of partnerships with the Lagos and Osun State Governments, local businesses, and NGOs. And we will meet some of the more than 300 youth who have gone through the organization’s innovative “business lab” model, in which teams of youth learn business skills on the job and generate valuable market data by rapidly prototyping and testing low-tech business solutions to community problems.

Nigeria desperately needs a model that creates such economic opportunity – especially in a way that’s inclusive of the millions of youth who are low-skilled and lack connections, capital, and exposure.

Olusegun Obasanjo noted that in our country “many of the youths are confused, discouraged, in deep trouble, and streets [are] full of violence as a result of youth unemployment.” Goodie Ibru, President of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, is concerned that “youth unemployment is at 50 per cent; the poverty situation has been worsening, currently estimated at 67 per cent [just as] the security challenges have not really abated.”

Lagos, where Generation Enterprise first launched in partnership with the Nigeria Network of NGOs, is a challenging but important place to start. Over six thousand people flood into the city every day, and its population will swell to over 25 million by 2015. Seventy percent of the population lives in slums, and over 60 percent of the city’s economic activity takes place in the informal sector. This megacity is where population explosion, slum expansion, desperate poverty, but also entrepreneurial drive and a new spirit of civic engagement collide.

The solution developed here in Lagos will be needed not only across Nigeria but around the world. One in six people on this planet reside in slums and two billion more will join their ranks by 2050, most of them under 30. Some 260 million youth in emerging markets are economically inactive and another 536 million are trapped in low-paying informal jobs on the margins of society.

The world’s existing employers cannot create enough jobs—let alone jobs with growth prospects and sustainable wages—to absorb the ever-growing flood of job- seekers. This is especially true in the developing world, where 85 percent of the world’s one billion youth live. Moreover, the developing world’s fastest-growing cities lack the infrastructure, governmental resources, or social safety nets to support newcomers to the job market. This global “youthquake” is costing countries billions in lost potential and leaving youth vulnerable to exploitation and targeted for recruitment by criminal groups, from local gangs to terrorist cells.

“The Generation Enterprise name and movement refutes the idea of Nigeria’s young people as a ‘lost generation’ or a ticking time bomb,” said co-founder Bunmi Otegbade, a Lagos native who quit a lucrative KPMG Nigeria position to focus on the organization and its mission.

Co-founder Newton Omebere-Iyari added, “we’ve got a model that works – we can prove that when given a chance, young people from Alimosho and Agege can make a positive contribution to our country’s development – and create real skills and wealth that moves them toward the middle class.”