As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility strategy, Mixta Nigeria has partnered with JA Nigeria to teach secondary school students the basics of starting and running a successful business through the implementation of the JA Be Entrepreneurial program. 

The program which will be implemented in Akwa Ibom, Lagos and Oyo states will expose Senior Secondary School Students to the fundamentals of owning an entrepreneurial venture. The 7-week program is designed to help students experience essential elements of a practical business and then challenge them to start an entrepreneurial venture while still in secondary school. The implementation will prepare students to analyze information, categorize data, decisions making skills, how to evaluate alternatives, express multiple viewpoints, graphic presentation, oral and written communication, etc.

During the program, the students are also made to learn about advertising, competitive advantages, financing, marketing, and product development as they continue to develop their product or service idea by analyzing various sources of successful entrepreneurial ventures, culminating in their selection of a product or service as the basis of their business plan. The climax of this program is a business plan competition where one winner will emerge in each of the different states.

While commenting on the partnership, Executive Director, Junior Achievement Nigeria, Foluso Gbadamosi, said “Our mission at Junior Achievement Nigeria is to inspire and educate young people to become conscientious business leaders; this partnership with Mixta Africa was borne out of the social need to empower young people with entrepreneurial skills. Due to the alarming rate of unemployment in the country, we believe that young people should be equipped with the skills needed to start and run their businesses, and not wait to be employed by an organization to own their economic future. Catching them young at the secondary school level is a strategic intervention which will reduce unemployment in the long run. We appreciate Mixta Africa for supporting JAN to raise a generation of conscientious business leaders leading a vibrant economy”.

Rolake Akinkugbe-Filani, Chief Commercial Officer at Mixta Africa pointed out that sustainability and the future of work are only possible through digitization and youth empowerment. She stated that “Societal development cannot happen in a vacuum. What we need is an enabling environment. There need to be systems that enable things to happen in society not just for young people, but for businesses and the community as a whole. There’s a lot that the private sector can do in terms of building this infrastructure but we also need to see how we can work hand in hand with the public sector given the limited resources we have to make that happen”. She went further to reiterate that “At Mixta Africa, our key focus areas are Sustainability, Innovation, and Empowerment and bringing all of that together, we believe that young people are at the heart of that. As a business, supporting the empowerment of young people is important because it is the only way to secure their future and enable their participation in the future of work”.