Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife on Friday hosted no fewer that 700 undergraduates from fifteen universities in Nigeria for the maiden edition of Nigerian Young Founders’ week.
The Nigerian Young Founders’ week was an initiative of Spark Up Organisation where young entrepreneurs and investors meet for collaborations.
Co-founder, Operations and Community Lead for SparkUp, Damilola Mogaji, disclosed that the organisation provide support platforms for young people and undergraduates building startups, small businesses and building careers in technology.
Damilola said potentials for development of Africa economy lie on university campuses and the need for adequate support for the potential to thrive neccesitated the facilitation of the event.
“There are a lot of potential here and spark up is trying to advocate support and to the best of our ability provide support. And we provide support in three different capacities but we’re focusing three majorly now. We are focusing on community, we are focusing on programmes. So we organised programs and this is part of it, Nigerian Young Founder’s week. We also facilitate mentorship and our programmes spans from event to mentorship programmes, acceleration and training programmed generally.
“We believe that the potential of Africa lies on university campuses and there is need for adequate support for this potential to thrive. There are a lot brilliant individuals, brilliant students that are building startups. There are a lot of startups that started from campus, Jobberman started from this campus, Founder Bumper started its journey from this campus, a lot of other people.
“I literally personally recommended somebody recently to get over a $50k funding into his start up and he’s still a student of OAU”
Damilola also called for incubation hurb on university campuses in Nigeria where inspiration and ideas from students can be nurtured ultimately where they can have access to funding.
Damilola added that funding and engagement of these innovators would fuel their ideas stating that if their potential are maximised it will equally improve gross domestic product of Nigeria.
He thereafter solicited help from the government, industry stakeholders, NGOs for sponsorship saying “if young people thrive, the country will also thrive.
The event had in attendance representative from University of Ibadan, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Redeemers University, Ladoke Akintola University, Adekunle Ajasin University, Federal University of Technology Akure among other universities.
On the expectations of the organisers from participants, Damilola said participants of the event have been equiped with inspiration and the confidence to forge ahead in their career to catapult them into bigger brands.
“For every participant as they are coming down from this hall and rounding up on this event they will receive the inspiration, the knowledge and the confidence to forge ahead in anything they do.”
