The above picture vaguely described our reactions on the 29th of January, 2021 when we concluded our one month intensive training in IFA fellowship short for Innovate For Africa fellowship, a lot of joy with a blend of hope and gratefulness was on the heart of every fellow like me. You know what? Let's take a step back to the beginning.
The Innovate For Africa (IFA) fellowship is a program organized by a team of vastly experienced educators, entrepreneurs, and innovators with the passion for providing powerful learning and training students to make a difference in their communities and the world as a whole.
The IFA team of facilitators consists of people from diverse backgrounds with our best interest in hearts equipped with the best experiences and researches done and this showed expeditiously during the weeks of training. From the design thinking processes where we implemented them in hackathons, to personal branding sessions, also strategic analysis sessions, to workshops with several guest speakers, hard skills lab to learn while solving a real life problem of a startup, not forgetting the fun socials, all these were made possible by them and made the training an amazing one while learning to innovate and entrepreneurship. I'm already nostalgic and it just ended two day ago!
You definitely should meet this amazing team!
Let me just say that I used to think entrepreneurship and innovation was just about producing a big product off head due to talent, popularity or skills especially in technology. I now know it to be a conscious and consistent effort to solve a problem but by not just designing a solution using skills or talent but also going through various design processes to know what to solve and how to solve that problem, not only that but also constant cycle of reiterations.
Before I talk about my personal experiences, let me give a brief overview of the curricular I went through for better understanding.
Personal Branding: This involved various sessions where I learnt on how to brand myself in a better way especially online, by the end of this curriculum I had an amazing resume, a portfolio of mine and a good description of my brand with ways to market myself and I am very grateful for all these.
Design Thinking: The sessions we had on this curriculum was a bit overwhelming at first but after a number of exercises and discussions with team members, shoutout to Gbolahan Kolawole and Akinola Akintayo. I had a swell time doing this and we ended up with an amazing idea, I'm confident it'll be going to production soon.
Strategic Analysis: I learnt a lot from this course and also boosted my confidence for interviews as I got to really prepare well for them and this showed in the interviews I had after this training.
Hard Skills Lab: I got to brush up on my python and data science skills and had the opportunity to work on a real life project with Splitspot which was very delightful I must tell you.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
One thing I would never forget is the the design thinking process as this training has given me more insight than I even expected.
I shouldn't be forgetting the hard skills I gained during this training as I intend to develop them the more to become a data specialist soon.
I think the place I had the most challenge is the design thinking process, it was a whole new concept to me and the activities required to engage in it was a bit too engaging but I soon adapt and got to love it. I am proud of my growth the past month and the level of grit I showed, still shocking to me.
I got to co-found EdSponsor a non-profit set to solve the illiteracy problem in Nigeria. The rough problem statement was chosen by our team consisting of three people and while we got to learn about design thinking processes, we got to apply them on this problem. From empathizing with stakeholders to understand the pain points to defining our problem statement, we got through the ideation process after so many discussions and then we got to prototype where we built a nice wireframe for the web app among others, before we presented to a panel of judges and facilitators and received feedbacks. Based on the feedbacks we received we can say we're well on the path to a successful startup.
Lest I forget we had amazing people come share experiences and knowledge in other to open our eyes the more and give us better insight to the industry in Nigeria especially. We had Faith Adesemowo from Social Lender, Michael Olorunninwo from Y-labs, Efosa Ojomo, Vivian Nwaka founder of MEDSAF, not forgetting Fehintolu Olaogun from Credpal and these people impacted me in many ways from broadening my thinking, to sharpening my focus, with punchlines to go with it. One major lesson I learnt from these people is the grit and innovation does not stop at any time when you're building a unicorn. I must always learn and unlearn, innovate with the future in mind as new resistance will come up daily and I must be prepared to outlast it.
I'm really glad to be among the Ingenious Trailblazers and couldn't have asked for better peers.
A special thank you to the IFA team for a major contribution to my growth this past month.
I'm definitely going to miss the sessions, assignments and reminders, but I look forward to the next phase of the fellowship. Buckle up y'all it's a long ride to glory!