Accenture, WAVE Partner to Develop Nigerian Youths for Labour Market

Sunday Okobi

Accenture Management Consulting Nigeria Limited has given necessary supports for the development of Nigerian youths through partnership with West Africa Vocational and Educational (WAVE) institution, a youth training institute, in preparing them for global labour market.

The partnership, through pro-bono services, financial aid among others, according to Accenture management team, would also enable partners to perform or measure better metrics on their output among others like improving their processes and long term planning while preparing the youths for their future endeavours. It noted that it is a continuous partnership which helps them to train and tutor the trainees among other support.

The initiative, it noted, was that setups such as WAVE would be able to help bridge the existing gap and give Nigeria the prerequisites required to have that pool of resources on what the country is expected to deliver in terms of human development indices or where Nigeria needs to be in the comity of nations.

At the graduation ceremony of the trainees in Lagos recently where 90 of them were certified fit for the job market, the Marketing Communication Director of Nigeria Office for Accenture, Segun Olaolandu, said: “Today is the graduation ceremony of a concept we started several years ago at Accenture. We saw that rather than dissipate a lot of energy on corporate social responsibility, we focused on a key area, and that was youth unemployment-to bring it to the fore-and now it is in the fore. We set out to do two things with that initiative called ‘Skill to Succeed’ which is to enable people get a skill to get a job-just like job shadows among others.”

He added that through the ‘Skill to Succeed’, Accenture has given partners the opportunities to start businesses, stating that “with WAVE, we have found an excellent partner. They have near-excellent RI in terms of investment in developing young talents among others goal-targeted activities and the results they get. They are closing on 90 per cent of the graduands getting a job or starting a successful business. So spending our time and efforts on this particular opportunity and project will always yield excellent result.

“Now, to tie that into our global expectations, Accenture aims at three million people it wants to impact though out all our organisations worldwide – to get people to start a business or get a job-and we have done that with WAVE which would graduate the recipients of this training based on our enablement of the process capacity.”

The CEO and Co-founder of WAVE, Ms Misan Rewane, exclusively told THISDAY that the initiative has been on since 2013, and that they have successfully trained and graduated the 950th student from different locations in Lagos.

She noted that at WAVE, hardworking youths are guided and taught the needed skills to succeed in the labour market, because what most employers are looking forward to are problem solvers.
Senior Manager at Accenture Management Consulting Nigeria limited, Tunji Gomez, who shared his ideas and experience with the departing students, noted that one of the things he had left with the recipients of the training was to dream big and allow their dreams to scare them “because that is the way they can attain greatness and move from where they are to a bigger place.

On the partnership with WAVE, he said the idea is that setups like WAVE would be able to help bridge that gap and give Nigeria the edge required to have that pool of resources expected from it to deliver its millennial goals of youth development.

The highlight of the event was the presentation of certificates to the successful graduates who are expected to give their acquired skills in their various endeavours thereby contributing their quota to the development of the countries.