Z Zurich Foundation to Work with JA to Create Bright, Boundless Futures for African Youth
August 12, 2022
We’re so excited to celebrate International Youth Day 2022 with some very big news: Z Zurich Foundation (ZZF) announced that it will partner with JA Worldwide and JA Africa, building on relationships already established with JA Canada and Junior Achievement España (JA Spain) and expanding them globally.
According to the African Development Bank, each year, 10 to 12 million African students finish their education and compete for three million jobs, resulting in sub-Saharan African youth becoming entrepreneurs by necessity, not by choice. The ZZF-JA partnership empowers young people in Africa to succeed as both innovative job creators and well-qualified job seekers, following the path best suited to their economic realities.
“The partnership integrates the education and economic ecosystems of the countries in which we work,” said JA Worldwide CEO Asheesh Advani, “leading to long-term sustainability. Over the course of the next three years, this partnership will impact the lives of more than 550,000 young people across nine countries—Burkina Faso, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, and Uganda—resulting in greater capacity in four current JA Africa countries and brand-new operations in five more.”
“JA Africa is a trusted and well-respected NGO that has partnered with local leadership and communities across the African continent for over 40 years,” added Brandie Conforti, Global Chief Development Officer at JA Worldwide. “And, as part of the global JA network, JA Africa has the advantage of drawing on the best practices, curricula, pedagogies, effective governance models, fundraising, communications, and financial-management capacity of over 100 JA member locations, five additional JA regions, and a global headquarters, all of which provide the solid foundation upon which this partnership is built.”
Grégory Renand, Head of Z Zurich Foundation, agreed. “JA is best known for utilizing volunteers to deliver educational experiences. We are very proud of this new partnership, delivering interventions and skill-based expertise with the aim to create brighter futures in Africa, building on impactful programs we’ve already built with JA around the world. The Z Zurich Foundation’s expertise on social equity and mental well-being nicely complements JA’s track record in building resilience and self-efficacy in more than 12 million young people every year.”
JA Africa CEO Simi Nwogugu has led efforts in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa for more than 25 years. “Many young Africans are entrepreneurial by nature,” she said, “but may be limited in their ability to develop solutions to the challenges around them and capture value from those solutions. The ZZF-JA partnership will help African youth develop the resilience, problem-solving and design-thinking skills, and mental well-being they need to understand the complex problems in the region and design sustainable solutions, and mentorship will play an important role.
“Exposing African youth to Zurich Insurance Group employees as global mentors,” Nwogugu continued, “as well as to JA Africa alumni and role models such as Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, who has founded not one but two unicorns in Nigeria, will help build the critical social skills and confidence necessary to validate their ideas and communicate them to a global audience of funders and clients.”
In addition to this exciting partnership announcement, Grégory and Asheesh co-authored a thought-leadership piece for the World Economic Forum blog, “Building resilience and youth entrepreneurship in Africa,” which debuted today. In it, the two discuss Africa’s blossoming entrepreneurial potential and its seven unicorns, up from zero in 2015. But as other continents have been fostering entrepreneurship ecosystems and building resilience into entrepreneurs’ DNA for generations, Africa still has a long way to go. So, to promote an entrepreneurial ecosystem and build resilience, educational, development, and social-good organizations must connect local, regional, and global entities, with each organization bringing its own, unique expertise. This is why the partnership with ZZF is so important and meaningful not only for our organization and the students we serve, but also for the entire African continent.
Read “Building Resilience and Youth Entrepreneurship in Africa” by Grégroy Renand and Asheesh Advani
““For Africa to be successful as a continent, all our youth need access to immersive education that leads to economic success. Through this partnership, we’ll create entrepreneurship ecosystems that work together to fuel young Africans to become changemakers, creating businesses that solve the continent’s challenges with climate change, food shortages, and inadequate infrastructures for health and education.””
The partnership announcement was made today at an event through which members of African media were able to ask questions, with a special interest in scaling and fast-tracking entrepreneurship education in Africa. International Youth Day was the perfect day to make this announcement, as the UN created this important day of observance in 2000 to raise awareness of the need to ensure the engagement and participation of youth. This year’s theme, Intergenerational Solidarity: Creating a World for All Ages, amplifies the message that action is needed across all generations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and leave no one behind. It aims to raise awareness on certain barriers to intergenerational solidarity, notably ageism, which impacts young and old persons while having detrimental effects on society as a whole. Read more about IYD 2022.
““On this important day, let’s join hands across generations to break down barriers, and work as one to achieve a more equitable, just and inclusive world for all people.””
At the webinar event, which you can watch in full below, the panelists noted that Z Zurich Foundation, JA Worldwide, JA Africa, and JA member countries in Africa are working to create a new breed of partnership that develops an ecosystem of role models and mentors who work with youth through a mix of high-tech digital learning experiences; low-tech options like television, radio, and podcasts; and face-to-face experiences. Then, after students graduate, regional and local vehicles that either match students with employers or help youth launch businesses through incubators and seed grants.