A total of 100 000 Nigerian youths will benefit from a strategic partnership between tech giant Microsoft and Shoespeed and Italian Shoemaker, Scali Shoes. The beneficiaries will be acquiring shoe making skills under the initiative which Microsoft said will help to mitigate the country’s unemployment challenge.
Microsoft added that the partnership will allow Nigerian youths to unleash their entrepreneurial capacities and will boost job creation, boosting the economy and combating poverty.
This is how the partnership works. Microsoft will upload a Shoe Making Video produced by Microsoft and Shoespeed on Microsoft Aiki portal for a month, where viewers will be trained on how to make shoes. Viewers would be required to make a prototype of the shoe to be able to participate in the campaign. The winners will then be trained by the shoemaking experts.
Olusola Amusan, Corporate Citizenship Lead, Microsoft Nigeria, said, “Earlier this year, McKinsey and Co estimated youth unemployment in Nigeria at around 50 percent. Our vision at Microsoft Citizenship is to scale the impact of the work that we do around youth and employment – by creating over 100,000 jobs over the next 2 to 3 years.’’
According to Amusan, international organisations including the United Nations and World Bank have shown strong interest in working with Microsoft to increase the total of young individuals who have skills, so they can have and also create jobs.
“The goal is to empower youths with skills that would satisfy needs across a broad spectrum of industries, stressing that, the technology giant had decided to deploy a strategic industry by industry approach to tackle the nation’s unemployment challenge,” he said.
Abiodun Folawiyo, chief executive officer of Shoespeed Nigeria, added: “We have an academy where we train youths on how to make shoes and we have partnered Scali Shoes because Italians have the expertise, equipment and resources to help train individuals in Africa on shoe designing and production.”
Italian National and Scali Shoes founder, Silvia Scali added: “At Scali Shoes, we have great passion for Africa. Africa is full of potentials and we are immensely delighted to partner Microsoft on this lofty objective of empowering the continent’s teeming youth population with skills that give them hope for a better tomorrow.”