Youth Entrepreneurship And Empowerment: Remarks by Chukwuma Charles Soludo

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Let me thank Dr. Stanley Uzochukwu (Stanel) — one of our leading champions for providing this selfless public good— a platform to celebrate, motivate and also learn from our youths.  As a country, we need to listen more to our youths. Sometime ago, I recommended the Commission on Youths.  Perhaps at the next Masterclass, we should devote it exclusively to listen to and learn from our youths—(Nigeria defines a youth as someone between 15- 29 years old).  Those below 30 constitute a majority of our population, and also constitute the future of Nigeria. For a more robust and sustainable future, we must assign serious front rows to the youths.

I was asked to make a few opening remarks on “Youth Entrepreneurship and Empowerment” at this Masterclass and I hurriedly scribbled these notes last night—please forgive any errors! I am glad that we have a galaxy of eminent and celebrated entrepreneurs, CEOs, and leaders to share diverse but rich personal experiences to motivate our young leaders to take their destinies in their hands.  You will see from their experiences how the tested principles of focus/vision, hard work, perseverance, character/integrity, partnerships/networks, and yes, the grace of God, shaped their lives and accomplishments.  I do not need to bore you with my personal story. Some of you may have read that I earned my PhD at 29; met the requirements for professorship at 34 and eventually promoted at 38. In my 30’s I lived in Ethiopia, UK, and USA and travelled to 45 other countries in all continents as itinerant scholar and consultant to 20 international financial and development institutions. This was before I was invited to join government as chief economic adviser to the president at 42 and Governor of Central Bank at 43, etc. Some may also have read about my roles in envisioning and founding of the Transnational Corporation of Nigeria (Transcorp), the AFC, and about a dozen other corporations. These stories are for another day.  What I intend to do in my brief remarks is to throw up a few nuggets of ideas to get us talking, and ultimately motivate us into individual and collective actions.

Let me be clear: I was born with a wooden spoon, and my message to our children and youths is this: if I could take some modest steps, in spite of my humble background, then anyone determined to do so can. As I said earlier, details of my personal story are for another day. But let me also make an admission of at least one good thing that Nigeria did right with its initial oil wealth.  Nigeria offered accessible and qualitative education to my generation as the ladder of opportunity to break out of the cycles of poverty. The children of the rich and the poor attended the same schools and taught by the same teachers, so that if the children of the poor were brilliant they had a chance to climb the social ladder.  My story won’t be complete without the role of accessible and qualitative education. The difference between the children of the rich and the poor is opportunity. Not anymore in today’s Nigeria! Today, the children of the poor can’t afford the qualitative education available to the children of the rich in elite private schools, and we are creating two Nigeria: a tiny part (less than 20%) in virtuous circle and the majority trapped in poverty as a dynasty. We must pay serious attention to the over 80% that are increasingly being left behind, and most of them don’t even have the education or data to join us in this Masterclass. As someone who climbed out of poverty, I spend a lot of time worrying about the millions who are trapped in it, and what we must do as individuals, communities, corporates, foundations, and governments to energize them to live out their God given potentials.

Youth entrepreneurship and empowerment of the future will happen in the context of the 4th industrial/digital revolution—where knowledge and skills will be critical drivers. So which segment of the youths are we targeting? The public education system in many parts of Nigeria has collapsed, and spewing out largely unemployable graduates. The EndSARS protests and thousands of our youths involved in the criminal economy should be a wakeup call. As a society, Nigeria must urgently address the youth challenge and turn it into an opportunity by urgently empowering them with the requisite knowledge/skills, access to finance, and jobs.  My current personal experiment with “Adopt a School project” confirms that when given the opportunity of accessible and qualitative education, the poor children break out and take their destinies in their hands, and in many cases do far better than some privileged children. Here, we must not confuse temporary palliatives or opportunistic charities with sustainable empowerment of our children and youths. We need to empower our youths to enable them to fish so that they can give themselves fish forever.

 Nigeria needs a new education system responsive to the demands of the 4th industrial revolution, and which leverages on rapid changes in technology. To empower our youths on a sustainable basis, we must offer them scalable skills. Technology can enable Nigeria create a system of lifelong learning and continuous skill upgrading.  This will empower millions of youths simultaneously. In this age of multi-tasking, we must target to provide every youth with at least 1-3 skills. In the digital age, creative destruction is the norm, and production structures will rapidly go into obsolescence and those who fail to upgrade or innovate will be left behind.  

Besides rapid upscaling of school infrastructure, technology, and curricula, a fundamental change must involve the elevation of the status and pride of the teaching profession. The quality of a society is determined by the quality of teaching/learning. If you show me the quality of teachers, I can predict the future of that society. So, if you joke with the teachers, you joke with the future! We must also pay attention to what happens in the homes, especially the status/opportunities for women— who shoulder the bulk of the responsibility of the pre- and after- school care for our children and youths. As the home is, so also is the society!

 Nigeria needs to create at least three million jobs per annum to give our youths a stake in its future. Beside the broader agenda for job-creating (inclusive) prosperity, we need a creative agenda for targeted youth entrepreneurship development through a systematic ecosystem that links business incubation and innovation to finance and mentorship. Here, we need to mainstream a new form of partnership involving the private sector, communities, and governments.  This could target to create at least 1,000- 5,000 youth millionaires per state per annum. If each of these nascent entrepreneurs creates 25 or more jobs, you can do the math. There are several options and schemes that can be explored for unleashing sustainable youth entrepreneurship and empowerment. We need to seriously walk the talk.

Let me conclude with a few words to our youths. Here I refer to those who are legally classified as youths (15 – 29 years) and those above 30 years who feel youthful and still aspire to do something different and impactful. The operating word is an impactful life. An impactful life is one which seeks to solve a problem or problems for humanity, a life that is value-creating, with the ultimate aim to leave the world better than we met it. My message is that it is never late to begin again. You can’t repeat the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome.  It is not your biological age that will determine how far you can go, but the age of your ideas, the robustness of the plan and the execution. Some of the biggest entrepreneurs broke out in their 20’s while some in their 70’s and even 80’s. The average age of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 is the mid 60’s or so. So, your biological age must not limit your dream. A key driver is continuous innovation. Check out the biggest businesses of the past 25- 50 years: except those that innovated continuously, most have died. Similarly, many of the brick and mortar businesses of today will rapidly atrophy and die.  Much of the future wealth will be wealth beyond borders— technology driven!

To go far, you need a team. Some say that if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. Your network is your net worth. You need other people in order to succeed big. Team selection is a critical success factor. Wrong teams or partnerships can derail or kill a dream.
Remember that the best way to predict the future is to create it—- and in many cases, no one will teach you how to succeed. There is a part of the success formula that is learnt in business schools, but a larger chunk is within you. It is not how many times you “fail” that matters, it is your readiness to treat your apparent failures as mere challenges and seek to review, learn, innovate and try again and again.

Personal responsibility, self-belief, and yes, character/integrity are some of those personal attributes that can make a fundamental difference. There is a “G-factor” (God factor) in every person’s success story. But the last I checked, God does not serve anyone breakfast on bed. Our religious leaders will help our youths more by emphasizing the old saying that God helps those who help themselves. Success, it is said, is when preparation meets with opportunity. Many youths often ignore this imperative of “preparation” or “investment for success”. The mind is the workshop for success. It is said that nothing ever got accomplished without first being created in the mind: if you can’t envision and live it out in your mind, you can’t achieve it! Waiting for miracles is not part of the agenda for youth entrepreneurship and empowerment. It is said that those who seek to add value, receive value in return. So, if you seek to make money, ask yourself this question: what problem are you seeking to solve for society? If you solve a problem for society, reward in whatever form (including money) will run after you.

Finally, I challenge our youths to pursue a higher purpose in life beyond self, and beyond the attainment of Maslow’s basic needs of shelter, clothing, food, etc. In several mentoring sessions with some youths I asked them what their purpose in life was. Many would answer that it was to make money and live well. Some of our youths now have a dangerous motto that says: “get rich young or die trying”. Getting rich is not an objective of success. Well, I love Bob Marley’s quote when he said: “He is so poor that the only thing he has is money”. Let me suggest that if the only thing we achieve in this life is to acquire money and fund our vanities, then it would have been a wasted lifetime. Some of us believe that part of our fundamental goal on earth is to aid God’s creation by aspiring to leave here better than we met it. No one will ever have enough money but everyone can devote his or her time, talents and resources to change something. After all, it is said that no one is too poor to give.
Let me commend all our panelists and host — who are devoting their God given talents and resources as change agents.

I recommend them for inspiration to our youths, not just because they are successful in their chosen careers or made money, but because of the humanity in them. Contrary to Bob Marley’s quote, these men and woman, and thousands more, are so rich because they live a life beyond self. May God grant our youths the grace to do better than them, and end each day by asking: “what have I done today to leave here better than I met it”?

God bless our youths and happy Valentine’s Day in advance!