Scheme to train young entrepreneurs to extend across Africa and Middle East

Simon Harding
3rd July 2009

A programme for young entrepreneurs run by the technology company HP in collaboration with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) is being extended across Africa and the Middle East, according to businessintelligence.com. The Graduate Entrepreneurship Training through IT programme (GET-IT) teaches young graduates and unemployed youths the skills they need to set up and run their own businesses. GET-IT will now dispense lessons in IT, finance, management and marketing in 18 new centres across Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Morocco, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, bringing the total number of African and Middle Eastern GET-IT centres to 33.

Managing Director of HP in the Middle East, John Hoonhout, said, ‘HP believes that entrepreneurship is vital for the economy and that young people can play a major role in creating their own businesses and their own jobs. The GET-IT training courses combine entrepreneurship education with practical hands-on experience in using IT to enhance young people’s professional skills’.

GET-IT forms part of HP’s ‘social investment strategy’. UNIDO identifies local non-profit organisations which have the potential to become partners and undertake the day-to-day running of a GET-IT centre in their local community. HP then provides funding, IT equipment and staff training.

This latest expansion of the programme looks to have set a precedent: HP hopes continued investment in GET-IT will increase its reach to 500,000 people by next year. Furthermore, HP and the UNIDO are in the process of linking GET-IT to UNIDO’s Entrepreneurship Curriculum Programme and its Enterprise Development and Investment Promotion Programme.

GET-IT makes a healthy contribution to youth entrepreneurship in the developing world. With few formal private-sector jobs available and state positions often reserved for the well-connected, earning a wage in the informal economy through micro-businesses like selling magazines, mending domestic appliances and cooking street food is often the rule, rather than the exception. GET-IT gives young people a chance to develop their own enterprises, beyond these near survival strategies, into thriving viable businesses. IT competency and an understanding of finance and business practice boost the ability of young entrepreneurs to reap the benefits of micro-credit and financial technology, such as mobile phone money transfers.  

See also: ‘UNIDO, HP launch new training centres in Africa and Middle East’, by ‘BI-ME staff’, businessintellience.com, 29/6/09. Available at: http://www.bi-me.com/main.php?c=3&cg=4&t=1&id=38497