Skills development and growth of Nigerian entrepreneurs

© 123RF

The partnership would allow up to 25 Tony Elumelu EF Entrepreneurs to participate in a dedicated four-week advanced manufacturing training program every year at GE’s Lagos Garage – a hub for advanced manufacturing-based innovation, strategy development, idea generation and collaboration.

Expressing her thoughts on the collaboration, GE director of communications and public affairs, Patricia Obozuwa, said, “There is a lot of alignment between TEF and GE’s commitment to the development of Nigerian entrepreneurs and we look forward to seeing some great success stories from TEF participants on the training program.”

Speaking on TEF’s commitment to empower Nigeria’s entrepreneurs, Parminder Vir, CEO, Tony Elumelu Foundation, added, “We welcome the collaboration with GE to spur the growth of the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurs, Nigeria’s new innovators. This program will help them to further develop their products and business models as a follow up to the foundation’s entrepreneurship programme.”

Real world problems

The training program will, among other things, expose participants to a wide spectrum of topics that are essential for manufacturing and design in the 21st Century: sharpen teamwork, communication, and creativity skills of participants; promote excellence in the practice of design and manufacturing within and across professions; expose selected entrepreneurs to real-world design and manufacturing problems, bring concepts to reality and cultivate the entrepreneurs’ ability to express, evoke and shape experience through design and manufacturing.

GE created the garages program in March 2012 to reinvigorate interest in invention, innovation, and manufacturing in America. This program went global with two workshops in Lagos in 2014 and in December 2016, GE launched a permanent space, co-located with their Lagos offices. It is dedicated to the training of young Nigerians in advanced manufacturing and business development.

By playing a role in the development of the advanced manufacturing ecosystem in Nigeria, GE hopes to create jobs, build local knowledge and capability, and encourage technology-based innovation in the manufacturing sector.

The entrepreneurs in this class will exclusively come from the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme - its 10-year, $100 million commitment to identify, train, mentor and fund 10,000 entrepreneurs, capable of changing the face of business across Africa.