CITAD Sensitizes Youths on Entrepreneurship and Grants Opportunities

By Hamza Ibrahim Chinade

The Job Placement and Information Service (JOPIS) of the Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has organized a non residential workshop for youths around Kano metropolis with a view to sensitizing them on accessing and utilizing entrepreneurship and grants opportunities. It is obvious that the rising number of unemployed youths has been a problem that governments, well meaning individuals and foundations are struggling to address. With the high level of unawareness on entrepreneurship sources, supporting individuals and bodies even among the literate youths, JOPIS unit of CITAD deems it necessary to provide the youths with a platform to learn, benefit and become self reliant through entrepreneurship opportunities.

Giving a background on the activities of the JOPIS unit, it’s coordinator Sagiru Ado Abubakar noted that the event is organized in order to introduce the youths participants into the essentials of developing innovative ideas that can win them entrepreneurship support, “we carefully selected the speakers of the workshop on the basis of their sound knowledge of entrepreneurship and grants opportunities, because they have benefitted from startup grants for businesses recently and we hope they can offer a good advice on how our participants can also benefit from the scheme”, Sagiru added.

The workshop witnessed three presentations on the processes and techniques of acquiring grants and other youths supporting initiatives by different bodies, wealthy individuals, foundations and government schemes. The first session was facilitated by Sufyan Lawal Kabo (himself a beneficiary of both Tony Elumelu Foundation Grant and World Bank Grant) on the yearly Tony Elumelu Foundation Grants; he explained how the grant can be acquired, and extensively couched the participants on how they can initiate innovative ideas as well as develop successful proposals.

The second presentation on Youths Enterpreneurship Support (YES) Programme by Khalid Hussain who is also a beneficiary of the Bank of Agriculture loan scheme looked at loan scheme of the Bank of Agriculture, the requirements and the kinds of businesses it supports. Abba Muhammad Usman did the third presentation on the Federal Government’s N-Power Programme focusing on the criteria, process and the nature of the beneficiaries; he also addressed the difficulties and challenges involved especially on the technical aspect of the programme. The event ended with questions and comments from the participants and a closing remark by Senior Programmes Officer of the organization Kabiru Saidu Dakata.