Z Zurich Foundation (ZZF) has announced JA Worldwide and JA Africa – Africa’s largest and most impactful youth-serving NGO – as their implementing partner.
This three-year partnership will enable thousands of youths to access JA programmes to set them on the path to success – not just as individuals but as leaders who will influence positive change within their communities, a statement announcing the partnership said.
The partnership will also enable JA Africa to expand existing operations in four countries, and launch operations in five new countries.
According to the African Development Bank, each year 10 to 12 million African students finish their education and compete for three million jobs – resulting in sub-Saharan African youth becoming entrepreneurs by necessity, not by choice.
The ZZF-JA partnership is expected to empower young people in Africa to succeed as both innovative job creators and well-qualified job seekers, following the path best suited to their economic realities.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of JA Worldwide, Asheesh Advani said: “The partnership integrates the education and economic ecosystems of the countries in which we work, leading to long-term sustainability”.
For the next three years, the partnership is hoped to impact the lives of more than 550,000 young people across nine countries – Burkina Faso, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo and Uganda.
This will be resulting in a greater capacity in four current JA Africa countries and brand-new operations in five more, she added.
The Head of Z Zurich Foundation, Grégory Renand said: “JA is best known for utilising volunteers to deliver educational experiences. We are very proud of this new partnership, delivering interventions and skill-based expertise to create brighter futures in Africa, building on impactful programmes we’ve already built with JA around the world”.
The Z Zurich Foundation’s expertise on social equity and mental well-being, he said, nicely complements JA’s track-record in building resilience and self-efficacy in more than 12 million young people every year.
The CEO of JA Africa, Simi Nwogugu, reckons that: “Many young Africans are entrepreneurial by nature, but may be limited in their ability to develop solutions to the challenges around them and capture value from those solutions”.
To this end, she said, the ZZF-JA partnership will help African youth develop the resilience, problem-solving and design-thinking skills, and mental well-being they need to understand the region;s complex problems and design sustainable solutions – and mentorship will play an important role.
Z Zurich Foundation, JA Worldwide and JA Africa are working to create a new breed of partnership that develops an ecosystem of role-models and mentors who work with youth through a mix of high-tech digital learning experiences; low-tech options like television, radio and podcasts; and face-to-face experiences.
“For Africa to be successful as a continent, all our youth need access to immersive education that leads to economic success. Through this partnership, we’ll create entrepreneurship ecosystems that work together to fuel young Africans to become changemakers; creating businesses that solve the continent’s challenges with climate change, food shortages and inadequate infrastructure for health and education,” Ms. Nwogugu said
The partnership’s announcement was made in a virtual engagement with officials of all the entities involved in a regional media presence.
