About Inspire Africa
Inspire Africa for Global Impacts Initiative was birthed from the innate desire of two entrepreneurs and couple, Blessing and Cynthia Mene, to uplift young people and unleash their full potential through education and mentoring.
Currently, Inspire Africa offers entrepreneurial leadership education to underserved youth in Nigeria and across the African continent through its flagship program; the Ignite Innovation Lab (IGL) Digital Transformation. The IGL is an online hackathon and incubator that teaches human centered design-thinking and digital business skills. The virtual innovation challenge equips youths in Africa (between 19 - 28 years) with the skills necessary to create digital enterprise solutions that progress the Sustainable Development Goals, and adapts them to the nature of work in the 21st Century. To date, Inspire Africa has trained over 4,000 Nigerian youth, funded over 300 business ventures, and created over 3000 jobs through the IGL Digital Transformation.
In 2021, Inspire Africa launched the LIFT Capstone Project; an innovative and comprehensive capstone project model that offers blended learning and culminating experience. It is designed for recent graduates to think critically and solve challenging problems for mid-sized corporations (for-profit/not-for-profit) by applying design thinking to real-life business projects. Through the capstone project, students develop the soft skills needed to succeed in a business environment, and help organizations innovate, create solutions to customers’ needs and increase ROI.
Our Training Model
Our goal is to energize the entrepreneurial and leadership vision of young people to create jobs, grow the local economy and serve millions of people across sub-Saharan Africa.
We deliver a curated entrepreneurship and leadership training program, Design Thinking and Innovation, business development support, and team building for young people in Africa.
Virtual Team-based Multi-Day Workshop
Participants will explore human-centered design methodologies, need finding, ethnographic observation, engineering problem-solving methods, visualization, rapid prototyping, team dynamics, and project leadership. The vehicles for learning include hands-on activities using digital tools (G-Suite), online group exercises, research and discussions, short lectures, and pitch rehearsals.
Design Exercises &
Digital Marketing
This initial introduction to design thinking methodology threads into an extensive exercise that asks participants to successfully infuse design thinking into business planning and entrepreneurial activities.
Participants will undergo further hands-on learning and workshops on digital marketing and utilizing social media for customer acquisition.
Project Leadership
Participants will be introduced to a series of creative confidence team building and leadership activities that will equip them with the leadership capacity to implement the business project and work with a team remotely.
The Design Thinking Process
Step 1
Identify problems
relevant to the user.
Step 2
Apply human-centered design approach to clearly define the problem.
Step 3
Identify a series of possible solutions.
Step 4
Create mockups and rough prototypes to visualize their solutions.
