Ridwan Rasheed is an entrepreneur, a Tony Elumelu Fellow and the founder of ZeroToOne Foundation. In this interview by KINGSLEY ALUMONA, he speaks about his foundation and its Leaders Fellowship programme, African youth leadership, how he would have handled the #EndSARS protests if he were the Minister of Youth, among others.
YOU have been in business, leadership and non-profit for some years now. How would you describe the beginning of your career?
Some people have to find their purpose in life; while for others, their mission and purpose would find them. Mine is the latter. Looking back, I think what influenced this path was my natural instinct to solve problems. When I see a problem, my first reaction is to fix it or to do something about it. So, these days, when I’m asked, “Who are you?” my mind wanders to what I’ve been through and who I’ve become. Today, I think I’m a sensation, whose story and life mission is to build/nurture high-performing young people and businesses in sub-Saharan Africa.
Non-profit business/endeavour in Nigeria is not easy. How do you manage to sustain your programmes? And what keeps you going?
Our approach at ZeroToOne Foundation is to leverage creativity and innovation in driving all our programmes and interventions. We go extra miles to develop projects leveraging digital technology that can enable us to achieve our vision in the most effective and efficient way possible.
We’re always committed to our cause and we’ve a unity of purpose. Our works are founded on the principles of Ubuntu. We partner or collaborate with various groups that are focused on solving similar problems, like with VMware, Interswitch, SheLeadsAfrica, Google Digital Skills for Africa, SAWOG initiative, Spectator to Spectacular, Conflict Free Nation, and American Corner.
You are the founder of ZeroToOne Foundation. Briefly tell us about the foundation.
ZerotoOne Foundation (www.the021.org) is a non-profit focused on reducing unemployment to end poverty by equipping youth with transformational digital, entrepreneurial and employability skills. We’re on a mission to raise effective leaders that’ll shape our future with impactful careers, technology, entrepreneurship, and civic leadership. We make ‘heroes’ out of ‘zeros’. Over the last few years, our programmes have impacted over 20,000 youth across Africa.
The third edition of ZeroToOne High Impact Leaders Fellowship is scheduled for this November. Given the COVID-19 social-distancing protocols, how would you manage the high number of participants? And, what does the fellows stand to benefit from the programme?
Our fellowship programme is a completely virtual programme, even before the COVID-19 pandemic. So, fellows across Africa can join comfortably from their respective locations. The programme is a six-week experiential learning programme. It’ll run from November 10 to December 19, 2020.
It’s designed to identify and grow talented leaders while giving them the opportunity to apply their skills and interests to provide solutions to pressing needs in their communities. Our aim is to bridge the gap between classroom learning and industrial knowledge for disadvantaged youths.
Fellows will be divided into two functional areas or tracks, depending on their choices and will work together in small teams to execute projects. These tracks are: Business Advancement and Entrepreneurship Track (BAE) and Career Advancement and Employability Track (CAE).
There has been call for youth participation in leadership and politics in Africa, but there seems to be little progress in this regards. What do you think could be done to boost the morale of African youth in leadership matters?
The era of natural resources is gone. We need to actively invest in human resources that’ll fuel economic and social-political transformation through innovation, creativity and technology. We need to promote, support and create more to boost the morale and momentum of African youth in matters concerning leadership.
Let me give you an instance. One of the fellows, from our last fellowship, was recently appointed an SA to the Deputy Vice Chairman, House Committee, on Army in Nigeria. Countless others have gone on to become gainfully employed across the world.
It is interesting this leadership fellowship is happening in this #EndSARS period. If you were the Minister of Youth, what leadership solutions/advice would you proffer to make Nigerian youth believe in themselves and in the government?
Nothing fuels prosperity like peace of mind, and peace doesn’t exist in the absence of security, human rights, education and infrastructure. Aids and poverty alleviation programmes don’t end poverty. We’ve been doing this for a long time and we haven’t had true empowerment. Instead, more people are out of jobs. Businesses are closing. People are out of school, etc.
To truly make a dent, we need to stop the twice-a-year colourful events to empower or reward a few people in our population and focus on creating fundamental catalyst of innovation like infrastructure, favourable taxing, business support, and much more.
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