PIN Gets Grant From Rockefeller Foundation For Expansion

  It has been announced that a grant of $500,000 will be given by the Rockefeller Foundation to Paradigm Initiative Nigeria for the expansion of PIN’s Ajegunle.org project which was launched in 2007 as an intervention project to connect Nigerian youth in low brow areas with ICT enabled opportunities. The grant will enable PIN to create more awareness to disadvantaged Nigerian youth about online work, provide training to enable them access jobs online and enable expansion beyond Ajegunle to other locations in Nigeria. The decaying education sector, high cost of education and increasing unemployment is a national problem which PIN hopes to address. Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa and with the phenomenal rise in the ICT sector and the online work sector estimated to grow to be a $5 billion global industry in 2018, it is only normal for Nigeria to tap into this huge potential. Presently, Nigeria is estimated to have the second largest number of online workers in sub-Saharan Africa despite our epileptic power supply and erratic internet connection. There is still a market of unaware Nigerian youth who do not understand how the process works. The Rockefeller Foundation, one of America’s oldest private foundations launched Digital Jobs Africa at the World Economic Forum for Africa which held in South Africa in 2013. This initiative is to impact at least a million lives in six African countries by creating ICT enabled employment opportunities and giving them the tools to make their lives better. Digital Jobs Africa is active in Egypt, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria.