Innovate for Africa is a training program for future entrepreneurs and innovators designed to foster innovative thinking and imbue the values of grit, growth mindset, innovation, diversity, inclusivity and collaboration, with the aim to prepare fellows for the startup world through training programs on Personal branding, Design thinking, Strategic analysis and Hard Skills lab.
The training portion of the program lasted for a month, during the first week of which we had our orientation and onboarding sessions and introduction to design thinking (where we were introduced to the IFA hackathon, a team based competition involving application of design thinking to a chosen sector eg. education, climate change).
The second week saw us begin to work on personal branding and the hard skills lab (I was in the product management track and worked with a health startup based in Tanzania in their product development). We rounded up the hackathon and design thinking program in the third week, presenting our product pitches before a team of judges and received feedback from them. We also started the program on Strategic analysis, where I learned how to analyze the different parts of a company using the STEEPLE analysis method amongst others.
Finally, in the fourth week, we rounded up our hard skills lab and presented our final deliverables to our start up clients.
It was a real period of growth for me at innovate for Africa 2021. I learned new things, met and worked with new and diverse people and got my Product management game on!
One of my greatest takeaways have been the IFA mindset of Grit.
I started out the program wanting to do my best and when I realized I wasn't meeting up, I started to feel overwhelmed and frustrated. With help from within and outside the program however, I persevered. I was able to turn around the situation, by learning to manage my time, through effective planning. I was able to contribute to and lead team work and assignments and eventually produce final deliverables while learning through practice the process of Design thinking and Product Management.
The guest speaker sessions that held, helped me develop an entrepreneurship mindset as I listened to the speakers talk about seeing opportunities in challenges, so that Instead of saying for example, that Nigeria is a corrupt country, seeing the opportunity would involve asking; 'How can I build a system that would be easily adopted and adapted to Nigeria, that would Phase out corruption?' 'How do I drive the adoption of this system?' 'where would I start from?' 'who are the key individuals or associations to approach?' 'who can I partner with?' 'which area could I focus on?'
This exposes an opportunity that if taken up would not only likely bring success to the entrepreneur because of the fact that there is the need for a solution, but also, the solutions would add value to people's lives and create an environment for more growth.
Finally, through design thinking, I have learned how to identify problems by empathizing with people, provide solutions and guide the process of bringing the products or solution to life and into the hands of people.
As is evident, the IFA training program packs a punch within a small space of time and I am glad I got through to the end of the program. I have gained a lot and moving on, I intend to apply what I have learned in my endeavors as an entrepreneur, working within or outside an organization with an entrepreneurial mindset where I am able to actively seek out and frame opportunities for growth and innovation, and follow up these opportunities to create actual products that make a difference in people's lives.