YouWiN! - A Plus For The Transformation Agenda

I went into the Corporate Affairs Commission office in Kaduna a few weeks back to pick up the result of a name search I did. While waiting to be attended to I saw a lady that came in to register an enterprise. I heard the CAC staff mention YouWiN! and that raise my ears. Just yesterday I was with another lady who won the YouWiN! grant. She told me about all the process involved in submission and the screening that followed until the last stage when she was selected as one of the beneficiaries.

Entrepreneurship is an area after my heart and whenever I heard anything in relation to that field I get excited. YouWiN! is a good step in the right direction in promoting entrepreneurship and job creation among Nigerian youths. YouWiN! is an introduction of the Jonathan administration with input from corporate organisations as well as international development agencies. YouWiN! stands for Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria. It is an innovative business plan competition aimed at job creation by encouraging and supporting aspiring entrepreneurial youth in Nigeria to develop and execute business ideas.

What fascinated me more was the process of selection of beneficiaries. All the beneficiaries that I have met in both the first and second phase of the programme shared a pleasant experience with the selection process. They told me that they knew no one in the agency responsible for selection of beneficiaries. All they did was to submit their business plans and waited until they were called on for the next stage.

This gave me some joy that things can be done transparently in Nigeria. It is a common belief that if don’t know anyone in Nigeria you cannot get anything. This belief is so ingrained in the mind of many people that it stops them from attempting to try anything. I am not saying that it is not true that ‘who you know’ syndrome exists but I am saying that there places that we can get things done transparently. The experiences of these beneficiaries give me some hope.

The disbursement of the fund is also something that impressed me. Each beneficiary has a supervisor who works along with him/her to ensure that he/she is making progress according to what was stated in the business plan. The fund is not released all at once; it is divided into four tranches. The first disbursement is usually large and you only get the second after you have used the first judiciously. After the second disbursement you are expected to start the business you proposed. Without starting the business you cannot get any more money. I also heard that there are sanctions for defaulting beneficiaries.

These checks and balances are there to ensure that the beneficiaries use the grant for what it was meant for. In essence this will prevent the beneficiaries from wasting the fund on other projects for which the money was not meant for e.g. buying clothes, cars or marrying new wives (hahahaha). Actually there are many people applying to this programme with the intention of getting their piece of the national cake and not necessarily because they want to build a business and a future.

Entrepreneurship is one of the ways to go in solving the unemployment and poverty problems in Nigeria. Entrepreneurship creates job as each entrepreneur can employ at least one other person or more. YouWiN! beneficiaries have the potential to employ four to five or more Nigerians each directly and this will translate into over six thousand new jobs. This does not include jobs created indirectly. This