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Despite the challenges and uncertainties occasioned by the outbreak of the novel COVID-19 pandemic – particularly with the closure of schools and with the social distancing rules – Enactus Nigeria have continued to find ingenious ways of serving communities through the Enactus students teams, demonstrating leadership by strictly adhering to the social distancing rules and implementing programs that help to mitigate the socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in communities across the country.
Highlighted below are some of the courageous and inspiring work that Enactus students have embarked on in their communities, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. The Enactus team from Kaduna Polytechnic is helping its community stay safe and healthy by ensuring people not only have easy access to hand sanitizers and water to wash their hands often, but that they actually imbibe the practice of hand washing and the use of hand sanitizers. The team creatively transformed waste (and other) materials into hand washing basins fully fitted with running water from a tap. The team also produced affordable hand sanitizers which people can easily access and use to protect themselves from the coronavirus. #EnactusCares #SocialDistancing

2. Determined to put their community first and protect them from the ridiculously inflated cost of the now scarce hand sanitizers, the Enactus team from Kaduna State University got to work and produced affordable and effective hand sanitizers with an alcohol content of 80% – meeting the WHO standards. In partnership with pharmacies, superstores and hospitals, the team has already produced and sold over 6000 bottles of the hand sanitizers at a rate far cheaper than the going rates. Again, taking entrepreneurial action, the Kaduna Polytechnic Enactus team also produced and distributed safe and recyclable face masks at a rate cheaper than what is available in the market.

3. Committed to ensuring that young people in his community put this lock down and social distancing period to productive use, Oluwatomilola Idris Mustapha, a student member of the Enactus team from Tai Solarin University, created the Leaders Hub – a virtual program that connects, engages and builds the brightest minds through a 30 day Learning Challenge on WhatsApp by 5am-7am . Participants would engage in various activities, such as vision engineering, meditations, affirmation, career talk, and a host of others – creating a culture of excellence among Next generation Leaders. At the end, successful participants will be paired up with Enactus Alumni for a six-month mentorship program.

4. In Rivers state, the Enactus students from University of Port-Harcourt have also joined the movement in producing and making affordable hand sanitizers available to the communities around them, at more affordable prices.These students also began a free online skill acquisition classes for students given that schools across the country have shut down all physical operations due to the pandemic.

5. Having previously organized an online sensitization program about the dangers of the ongoing COVID – 19 pandemic and its preventive measures, the Enactus team from the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, also realized that residents of their host community were oblivious of the reason for the government mandated lockdown and were also not really aware of the deadly nature of pandemic. Therefore, the team repurposed the laudable online program to a communal engagement program which allowed them to visit a rural community in Ekiti state to enlighten the people about the dangers of the virus and the necessary preventive measures they must imbibe. During this engagement, the team also distributed relief materials to the residents of the community.

6. In Ota, Ogun state, the Enactus team from Covenant University reached out to one of the exposed and vulnerable group – Police Officers – on patrol duty to enforce the lock down directive by the government. The Enactus team from Covenant University provided the police station in their immediate community with face masks to protect them from getting infected during their daily operations.

7. The Enactus team from the Federal Polytechnic, Idah provided their support in bridging the gap between buyers and sellers of food items, due to the social distancing directives. To this end, the Enactus team has developed an e-commerce platform linking food sellers (who cannot take their goods to the market because they are closed) to buyers (who are in need of these goods, but they have to stay safe at home). Once the connection is made, and the orders placed, the Enactus team ensures that the orders are delivered to the buyers in record time.

8. The Federal University of Agriculture Makurdi in Benue state houses a great team of students who also saw opportunity in the problems caused by the Covid pandemic, and joined the movement in encouraging people to maintain proper hygiene and protect themselves against the virus, through the production and commercialization of alcohol-based hand sanitizers.

9. Committed to ensure that vital information about the deadly corona virus gets to the people most vulnerable in rural communities, and in languages they can understand, the Enactus team from Bayero University, Kano, using materials from credible sources, created an engaging and very informative video explaining the safety precautions to take against the virus in Hausa language and disseminated same in different communities. This way, they can be sure that the uneducated and non-English speaking members of their communities get the right information about how to protect themselves from the deadly virus.

10. The Enactus team at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, has successfully organized and hosted a social media campaign on twitter. This allowed the team share educative content and host live panel discussions to keep their audience engaged and informed about the corona virus.

In addition, the Ahmadu Bello University Enactus team will be providing relief materials to the poor and vulnerable families in the Zaria community through its new initiative – The Enactus ABU Food Support Program. The goal of the program is to provide relief materials including food and other essential products to 150 families in 6 different communities and help cushion the effect of the lock down on the families. The program will be implemented in 3 phases, with the first phase (outreach) scheduled for May 28, 2020. In this phase, the goal is to provide relief materials for 50 predetermined vulnerable families in the Bomo and Samaru communities of Zaria.

For Enactus Nigeria, the belief has always been that, with the right motivation, mentorship and support, the Nigerian youth can leverage their youthfulness, energy and innovative genius to make meaningful contributions to national development and cohesion.

May 11, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic with its attendant restriction on economic activities and severe impact on the oil market is set to reverse Nigeria’s growth of 2.3% achieved in 2019. There’s no gain saying that the economy of Africa’s most populous nation is heavily reliant on crude oil. Therefore, the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, updated its annual macro-economic outlook report to reflect the major shift due to the global pandemic. In report released in May, three scenarios were projected for the Nigerian economy in 2020. The projection factored in movement in crude oil price and volumes, government capital spending, the effect of the pandemic on non-oil sectors and other factors.

The lockdown of several states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in the second quarter of the year 2020, will have an immense negative impact on GDP growth throughout the year. The three major GDP components – household consumption, government spending, private investment – were constrained during the lockdown effected due to the spread of coronavirus and are expected to perform poorly in full-year, relative to 2019. This is based on the high level of uncertainty over the pandemic as well as the fragility of the economy exemplified by the poor performance of major macroeconomic indicators.

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May 7, 2020

Since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, the sports industry in Nigeria has taken a big hit and has been adversely affected. There was thus a need to re-strategize (short, medium and long term) and analyse the effects of COVID19 on the industry with a view to incorporating same into a new national Sports Industry Policy

In view of this, the Sports Industry Thematic Group (SITG) of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development held a webinar which had in attendance key stakeholders of the industry including the Honourable Minister for Youth and Sports Development. Mr. Sunday Dare, to discuss and examine the issues raised by COVID19 and its effects on how sport may be consumed in future across all spectrums of the value chain of the sports industry – participants, investors, regulatory agencies and fans.

May 4, 2020

The impact of COVID-19 on the global economy is severe and the near-term economic outlook appears gloomy. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the pandemic will inflict a deep economic recession on the world economy. For Nigeria, the threat of economic recession is worsened by the pre-existing fragility of the nation’s economy and the sharp decline in crude oil prices with a resultant downward revision in the 2020 Budget. These factors combined will lead to further adverse impact on the economy, businesses and households.

As Nigeria’s foremost economic think tank promoting the sustainable growth and development of the Nigerian economy, the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (https://nesgroup.org/) has continued to generate and share policy-oriented research and analyses on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the different sectors of the economy, businesses and households. This is done with a view to proffering strategic recommendations to policymakers and development partners on effective policies and strategies for recovery from the shocks and disruptions of the pandemic.

 

As a result of the global pandemic, entrepreneurs are fast adjusting their business models to ensure continued productivity and relevance. For entrepreneurs within the FATE Foundation Network, every situation presents opportunities to add significant value and solve problems, while getting creative with its delivery.

Here are 4 inspiring stories of innovation and entrepreneurship from the FATE Foundation pool, that has gained spotlight amidst the seeming crisis.

Handwashing is extremely important to mitigate the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Ayinla Ahmed (AEP 75), the FATE entrepreneur from Citi Foundation sponsored AEP Tertiary programme, built a Contactless Mobile Hand Washing Device as his contribution towards safe hygiene processes, and preventing the spread of viruses in our environment. This device can be used in homes, schools, malls, marketplaces, construction sites and public places.

This foot-operated device is movable, durable, easy to operate, can be easily dissembled and assembled. Find out more about the features of this product by watching a video demonstrating the use of the product here.

Ikenna Princewill (AEP 65) the founder of Nzuko.

Nzuko is powered by Allweda Child Safety, one of Nigeria’s finest Tech startups. In response to the COVID – crisis, this tech tool provides access to a collaborative work platform and ensure seamless remote working for working professionals in Nigeria. Nzuko is an online collaborative tool that provides real-time sharing of audio, video, slides, chat and screen. It can be used to hold corporate meetings, webinars and classified broadcasts.

The site was launched May 6, 2020 and has recorded over 66 signups from individuals and schools on the platform. To find out more about this tool, visit nzuko.club today.

 

To ensure students get to study, amidst the COVID-19 crisis, Isaac Oladipupo, and his team developed ClassNotes.ng; an education resource platform that provides educational video lesson for Nigerian Students.

The site was launched on the 5th of April,2020 and within 2 weeks had a soaring 93,790 views. The team are working hard to provide more content on the secondary school curriculum to ensure greater impact.

Isaac Oladipupo (OCN1) is the Co-founder, Afrilearn and an incubatee from the Kingdom of Netherlands sponsored Orange Corners Nigeria, incubation program.

Afrilearn is an education technology company that integrates teachers, software developers and animators to deliver excellent education targeted at Africans, anywhere. These culture-specific educational video lessons are developed into engaging animation and deployed for users’ consumption via App, Web and data-free Dongle services at highly affordable rates.

 

Following the Lagos Statewide Lockdown, Deborah Oloyede (AEP 62) had to make a quick transition to virtual, from an onsite office closure, to a virtual delivery of classes, using virtual audio and video channels such as WhatsApp, Zoom and YouTube. She only had to create bite-sized modules to help students get exactly what they need.

This strategy has enabled her to generate revenue during the lockdown and receive payments. For online training, the smaller modules made it easier to track student progress and the viability of this method of delivery has been proven because students have been able to complete the same projects included in physical classes.

Deborah Oloyede is the Creative Director of Èlan Clothiers, an Afrocentric Clothing and Apparel company that also provides Fashion Designing Training. She attended the FaceBook sponsored Aspiring Entrepreneurs Program: Digital.

As a result of the extensive nationwide lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ACA Foundation is facilitating a Relief Support to low income communities within Lagos.

The initiative will be facilitated through Give Food Stamps; a social enterprise food based program, set up to provide cooked food to the less privileged and most vulnerable in the society.

April 27, 2020

In light of the closure of schools across the country due to the Coronavirus pandemic, The Education Partnership (TEP) Centre in partnership with NESG, drew on its recognised competence in research and education landscape mapping to contribute to the knowledge base on education provision in emergency contexts, by identifying and mapping education interventions that are being implemented in Nigeria during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Consequently, a survey was conducted to map and report the responses of various stakeholders in the education sector to the Coronavirus pandemic to understand learning innovations currently being implemented to enable children learn while at home. Further, the survey facilitated ascertaining how students and parents are engaging with these learning innovations and the efficacy of the interventions. Data from this survey will feed into a public report that will be available to the public and serve as a reference for education innovations during emergency situations.

April 23, 2020

In a podcast interview with Ada Irikefe of The Experience Pod (PWC), Oare Ehiemua, Founder and CEO of OPL Academy discusses her decision to go into the construction space which was fueled by the increasing rate of youth unemployment in Nigeria.

For OPL Academy, the mission was simple: To bridge the skills gap in the construction industry and raise the standard of skills because we find that education within the sector is so poor.

In the Founder own words, “I have a passion for education and I just felt if there’s one industry where I could probably look into that is large enough to absorb unskilled talent, and put them to decent work, it’s probably the construction industry. I looked at macros and the macros were not looking good. You find that there is a huge housing deficit in Nigeria. For instance, World Bank estimates that we need to produce about 850,000 houses annually over the next 20 years, to just bridge this gap in housing. Quality of housing is bad. Two-third of our population in the urban area lives inside substandard housing.”

Another issue was just around the skill. You find that the population of very skilled construction workers, blue collar construction workers which is our focus area, are probably aged on average between 45 to 50 years now, and you don’t have enough of the younger skilled workers coming on board now to close that gap.

For me, construction was a no brainer especially given my passion for education and I just feel that if we can address the skills gap, then we could sort of have the domino effects on all the other macros that are looking quite negative at the moments within the industry. As to why we decided to go into this now, I just feel we are sitting on a time bomb, and if we do not address this now, it is going to cause serious issues later.

In the interview, she goes on to explain the importance of upskilling, its relevance in this digital economy as well as what OPL academy is doing differently to build the construction industry in a Digital world such as ours. She further opines on  Automation and Robotics leading to Job losses and according to her, “I don’t think that technology will ever replace completely 100% of the human function especially roles that require you to do some kind of cognitive thinking. These things are skills that humans have and enable them to adapt that robots do not necessarily have. I do believe that technology is increasingly being used, especially robots to just increase efficiency in the job, to reduce wastage levels and just as a cost measure as well.”

OPL Academy runs like a professional ethics program, which is more service oriented because of the belief that most people in this construction industry are servicemen. These high potential workers are upskilled with professional ethics and other soft skills, and then connected to jobs with reputable construction companies. Through OPL apprenticeship program, these workers get hands-on training in their respective company placements, and they also get exposed to best practices and leading technologies.”

April 12, 2020

The NESG partnered with the Africa Initiative for Governance (AIG) to enable the deployment of an incidence and response tracker, dashboard and predictive analytic platform – to assist the containment of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. The key strategic objectives of the Systems Platform are to provide a robust, up-to-date database of Federal and Sub-national resource requirements for the COVID-19 response, as well as comprehensive real-time database of Federal and Sub-national resource availability for the COVID-19 response based on the WHO recommended resource specifications for packages for COVID-19.

The platform which is endorsed by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, the Ministry of Health, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), will provide real time data to the federal and state governments, private sector, international organizations and other donors that intend to mobilize and provide human and material resources in response to the outbreak of COVID-19 in Nigeria.

With an aim to better enrich and equip its growing pool of partners, the ACA Foundation facilitated a two-part training programme on “Achieving Strategic Clarity: Leading for Impact PART 1 & 2”. The training which was held in the ACA office had senior management representatives from across the ACAF grantee pool in attendance.
The first part of the training which held in July, focused on reviewing and aligning the elements of Intended Impact as a team, whilst the second part which followed in October, focused on the best practices for developing an effective Theory of Change.