This project is one of the 2020 WISE Awards finalists.
The JA Company Program is an entrepreneurship education curriculum which reaches high school and university students from all across Africa. The Company Program® helps participants understand production, sales and marketing, analytics, consensus building, public speaking, leadership, and competition. The Program’s experiential nature means students get the opportunity to start a company and experience entrepreneurship and basic business concepts.
Across sub-Saharan Africa, it takes the average graduate six years to find their first job as African economies do not create as many jobs as the schools graduate young people. The vast majority of youth have to create their own employment through small enterprise. JA’s Company Program gives them the knowledge that sets them up for success.
JA Africa believes in presenting entrepreneurship education earlier on in the academic careers of young people in Africa, as a way of providing them introductory understanding of entrepreneurship in order to shore them up for greater success in their working lives.
JA Africa is a non-profit organization based in Accra, Ghana and coordinating the work of JA in 15 countries across Africa, reaching over 250,000 young people annually through its programs. The organization is led by its CEO, Elizabeth Elango Bintliff, who is a development professional with over 20 years of experience working in developing countries across Africa. About 18,000 young people are reached annually with this program. In the last 8 years alone, over 339,000 students have completed the program, with a goal to enable students to be entrepreneurial in their thinking and actions by teaching both hard and soft skills.
A 2019 evaluation of the program revealed that participation in the program had a resounding impact on how alumni perceive entrepreneurship making it more accessible to them.
Ultimately, aspires to scale this project, creating a digital entrepreneurship education curriculum specifically targeting African youth.
