Turning Waste into Wealth – A Young Entrepreneur’s Contribution Towards Community, the Environment, and National Happiness
At just 30 years old, Karma Yonten is Bhutan’s first citizen to turn waste management and recycling into a business. The old saying goes that “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”: Karma saw opportunity in the country’s maligned, unsightly and toxic landfills, which had dangerous side-effects for people’s health. His pioneering enterprise, Greener Way, […]
Accelerating Peace through Youth Entrepreneurship
I recently participated in a conference on fighting piracy in Somalia. The topic: how to combat the thousands of men, AK47’s strapped to their backs, that were taking skiffs into the azure blue waters of the Indian Ocean to hijack and loot ships. The conference had a packed schedule, and international security officials discussed everything […]
Cocoa Life and Verification: A Circle of Learning
By Mil Niepold, Senior Mediator, Consensus Building Institute My job is to listen, and to encourage others to be excellent listeners. Listening means being open to hearing what people need and want, what works and what doesn’t. Listening gives others, especially those who haven’t been heard, a voice, and this is key to creating and […]
Technology Boosting Economic Opportunity in Rural Ghana
Almost half of the world’s people live on less than $2.50 a day. In my country, Ghana, nearly 30 percent of the population and almost 60 percent of those under 25 survive below this grim poverty line—facing stark daily choices between spending on food, healthcare, education and shelter. In a world where the wealthiest one […]
Worldwide enterprise knowledge-sharing is key to tackling youth unemployment
Over the next decade 1.2billion young people will enter the job market globally. But potentially only 300million jobs will be available. The youth unemployment debate has topped UK agendas in recent months. While there has been a slight decline, almost 1 million 16-24 year olds were out of work as of June 2013. Unemployment is […]
Harnessing the Business Potential of Honey
I have recently been focusing my time on a honey production company called KEYDA, one of the two selected youth led companies on whom the business booster will be tested in the third phase of the pilot. To get a better picture of their current status and in order to assure a certain level that […]
Mo Ibrahim’s Recipe to ‘Deliver Africa’s Promise’
Alice Allen, Head of Advocacy, Care International UK What do you get if you combine the youngest participant in the 2012 Olympics (13), ‘making agriculture sexy’ and the establishment of a business corruption index? The answer? Africa delivering on its promise and fulfilling its economic and social potential, according to the Sudanese-born, global mobile communications […]
The Bigger Picture of Youth Economic Opportunity
Youth unemployment has taken center stage in global economic policy – and with good reason. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has put jobless youth at a minimum of 75 million worldwide, with young people unemployed at twice or even thrice the global adult unemployment rate. Yet, while job creation is indeed critical, generating widespread economic […]
OECD Report Highlights Role of Vocational Education
The annual Education at a Glance report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development takes a particularly hard look this year at the link between youth unemployment and vocational education in the current difficult economic situation. Countries such as Switzerland and Germany with an above-average share of vocational graduates have seen a higher rate […]
What is the role of business in delivering on the post-2015 development goals?
What is the role of business in delivering on the post-2015 development goals? This was the question I was asked to address on a panel at the EU High-Level Conference on Education and Development on 23 May, aimed at strengthening the momentum for education as the foundation for a new international development framework. The panel […]
Nairobi, Thriving Entrepreneurship Hub of East Africa
the A Factor and Curator, Innovation Tours In her TED Talk, The danger of a single story, my favourite Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains how dangerous it is to reduce a person, a culture, a continent to a unique and biased perception. The viral Youtube video “Africa for Norway” with African actually raising funds […]
Pearson and CBI launch UK education and skills report 2013
Educators, employers and policy makers gathered at our HQ in London today to formally launch the findings of CBI/Pearson education and skills survey 2013. This annual survey provides a valuable insight into how well the skills needs of some of the UK’s largest and most successful businesses are being met. The findings from the survey […]
Business Incubation in Ghana
Mabel Simpson is the creative director of her own design house, mSimps. It’s a prestigious job for a young woman in Ghana. “At mSimps we make hand-made hand bags, clutch purses, men’s slippers, laptop sleeves,” she says proudly. “All mSimps bags are one-offs. Two people do not own the same bag. Our designs are inspired […]
Wheels for Fortune
It is difficult for people with disabilities to access mobility equipment in remote areas of Africa. Statistics from the UN Development Programme show that less than 1 percent of the need for wheelchairs in developing countries can be met by the limited local production, and those wheelchairs that are available are often unsuitable for the […]
Supporting South Africa’s entrepreneurs every step of the way
Lere Mgayiya founded Lere’s Shoe Shine Experience (http://www.shoeshine.co.za/) in 2003 to provide shoeshine services to passengers and staff at airports around South Africa. There was a glaring gap in the market for the traditional and enduringly popular service, but to spot it showed great entrepreneurial panache, panache and get-go that is unusual in a young […]
Why Job Creation Is King in Africa, Just Like Everywhere Else
At the recent Africa Economic Summit in Cape Town, one of the themes of debate was the ‘post 2015’ goals, which the United Nations community will set itself when the existing Millennium Development Goals expire in 2015. I spoke at an event hosted by Business Fights Poverty where the audience seemed divided over whether these […]
My Experience as a Mentee in the Mentoring Women in Business Programme (Part 3)
Dumpling Dreams was previously just an “idea”, but over the past year became an implementable and actionable plan. After I returned from the UK, my mentor and I firstly needed to brainstorm about how to raise the start-up capital necessary to put this dream into motion. December 2012: Lenovo group launched their “For Those Who […]
First Step Economic Opportunity Zone: Challenges of Running a Juice Factory
“I can sell you 14 235 pineapples”, that’s what a farmer said to Claudio Scotto, CEO of Africa Felix Juice. 14 235 pineapples – quite an impressive figure at first glance. If you put it into the context of Claudio Scotto, you will end up with a different interpretation: A lot of small scale farmers […]
Business Booster Project Sierra Leone
Wednesday, 17th April 2013, 18:00 local time: Arrival at the airport in Freetown. Add to it 5 more hours for taxi, waiting, the slowest ferry ride I have seen in my life and another taxi, that’s the time I arrived in downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone. But even though transport and a whole lot of other […]
Creating Opportunities in Rural East Africa
For most young people in rural communities in Africa, opportunities are scarce. With only 28 percent of Africa’s labor force holding stable wage-paying jobs, and most of those concentrated in urban areas, rural life can appear to offer little prospect for advancement. On a recent trip to Kenya, I met 26-year-old Alice Micere from Njukiini, […]