Head, Social Impact, VP Central Europe, Middle East and Africa
Tell us about what you launched today?
We had a partnership launch with STEMPower. It is to support technology entrepreneurs. This is a three-year partnership to address financial education in Ethiopia. The availability of money skills would increase the success of the technology entrepreneurs. We see this launch will help us to fill the gaps between the school curricula and job-market. We are looking forward to use the lessons we learn from this project in Ethiopia to scale up this project across many countries.
What are your expected successes of this project?
This project will leverage financial education assets. It will also assist curricula development for secondary schools not only in Ethiopia but across many markets. It will provide the skills necessary to at least 3,600 technology entrepreneurs in Ethiopia over the next three years. This will help Ethiopian technology entrepreneurs to be financially included into the electronic commerce market. It is this support which we are seeking through our partnership with the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE)—the Ethiopian Central Bank—and the Bank of Abyssinia.
What motivated the choice of STEMPower in this partnership arrangement?
STEMPower is a strong powerhouse in Ethiopia. It has been supporting technology entrepreneurs. It has done this through its 45 STEM Centres in Ethiopia. We have a strong alignment in our programme in both rural and urban Ethiopia. STEMPower is helping us to implement this programme in both urban and rural areas because in rural areas, we believe that we can find the unbanked. In the urban areas, we have the banked the unbanked and the banks.
How will the programme run?
Between now and January 2021, we hope to have administered the financial literacy course to the training of the trainers. We hope to have the first cahoots of 60 technology entrepreneurs for three months. We will continuously measure the impact of this course and continue to build on this model to see if it can be applicable in many more areas.