Collaboration: The Pathway to Tackling Nigeria’s Social Issues.

At the recently held She Leads Tech For Impact Symposium organised by Lead For Good Africa in partnership with Microsoft Nigeria, Mrs Ola Williams, the Country Manager, Microsoft Nigeria and Ghana, shared on the need for continuous collaboration in creating opportunities for women in leadership positions. While she encouraged the women in attendance to be prepared for opportunities, she also advocated for more opportunities to be created for women by women.

She Leads Tech For Impact symposium was organized by Lead For Good Africa, a leadership development and impact consulting social enterprise founded by Chinonso Clark. Lead For Good Africa is on a mission to eradicate poverty and solve the human capital development crisis prevalent in Nigeria through transformative leadership development, impact consulting and program implementation.

On why She Leads Tech For Impact was organised, Chinonso shared with us on the need to support gender equality in tech. We believe there needs to be a collaboration between multiple stakeholders with the capacity to change stereotypes, and support equality through early education. The overarching goal of this program is to invest resources in driving quality conversations geared towards training the girl child to overcome conscious and unconscious bias; to create more resonant leaders; to provide mentorship and internship opportunities designed to train young girls in leadership, technology, and innovation.

She also shared with us on why multisectoral collaboration is the key to tackling the various challenges bedevilling today’s society. From the issue of increasing access to quality education for the undeserved, to tackling youth unemployment, and even the Japa syndrome that appears to be creating a brain drain, all hands must be on deck to create solutions that can develop the human resources relevant for economic growth and development. Every healthy and developing society requires three vital sectors: a public sector of effective government, a private sector of effective businesses, and a social sector of effective community organisations working towards changing and improving lives. The successful implementation and acceleration of the SDG’s in this part of the country inherently requires the collaboration of the private, public and social sector.

This symposium which was powered by Microsoft Nigeria was a testament to the endless possibilities that exist when all three sectors work together towards societal and economic development. By combining different perspectives and ideas, we can develop and implement innovative solutions to the complex problems that plague our continuous evolution and development as a Nation.
In attendance at this program, were young girls from various underserved communities who were presented with an opportunity to experience the world of technology. In the words of one of the participants, Blessing (15), ‘Today was one of the best days of my life and I can’t wait to create solutions that empower and uplift others with the knowledge I gained today’.

In the words of Chinonso Clark, the founder of Lead For Good Africa, “If there’s one thing the recently concluded elections showed us, it’s our collective desire for advancement and progress as a people. As much as we know that the government has a pivotal role to play in our collective advancement, I also believe that private citizens like you and I have a responsibility to work towards our collective advancement as a people. Our world is increasingly interconnected, now more than ever. We must begin to think of ways to play our part individually in solving some of the social challenges that plague our collective development.

This program is one of the ways through which we are making our own contribution to solving the issue of poverty. Last year the UNDP released a report with the statistics that 63% of persons living within Nigeria (133 million people) are in multidimensionally poor. Poverty makes people resort to crime and other vices that affects us individually and our collective progress as a nation. I founded Lead For Good Africa to help solve some of the social issues plaguing our development as a people. Through leadership development and our capacity building programs, we are working towards eradicating poverty and elevating the life of people so they can break the cycle of poverty, attain their human potential and make meaningful contribution to society’s development.

She Leads Tech For Impact was sponsored by Microsoft Nigeria.