By Philemon Adedeji

Lead Africa held 20 Years anniversary and celebration on Thursday, September  8, 2022 aimed to reawaken, redesign and re-emerge Africa beyond potential

The Chief Marketing and Brand Communication of Union bank, Mrs Ogochukwu Ikaeze Ekaidem  who was a one of the keynote speaker gave opening remarks by congratulating the team On the 20th anniversary and celebration, she said is always excited and humbled when  this  type of event comes up because it always reminds her of the potential and the opportunities that exist in our country, and especially among the youths.

“I’m especially excited this year,  because of the 20th anniversary celebration and our paths on life intersect in different barriers. And in every space in the European Union always an inspiration and it is part of your vision, it’s your vision that we celebrate today. So I want to congratulate you,  the LEAP Africa wanted to pass on President for the opportunity to be here today.”

For 20 years, leap Africa has been inspiring, empowering, and developing young leaders through initiatives and programs and the social innovators program. Through the social innovators program, leap Africa has enabled young social innovators in Nigeria to scale their ideas and impact by providing them with the necessary skills and tools needed for personal, organizational and community transformation.

“You know, Mass partnership with Leap Africa on this program began about nine years ago. At that time, we were inching towards our own 100th anniversary and really sort of thinking about what we want to stand for and we connected with this vision of supporting and helping young people with the principles of leap of belief trade with the LEAP principles so that they’re able to build sustainable enterprises.

“Through this partnership, we’ve been able to demonstrate our commitment to empowering and enabling successful young Nigerians and for Nigerians as a whole. If you look at the banners behind, you can see that this year, we’re celebrating our fifth anniversary. So we’ve been here for a while.

“You know, back to our mission, we Leap Africa and the social determinants program. We are proud to have supported over 150 CIP fellows, I know that today’s centers around the country started. And as we said earlier, obviously, the impact is  multiple, there our specialty crowd that even post the CIP program that we we’ve been able to sustain relationships with some of the fellows and working with them on a lot of our community initiatives who have trained 7000 women,  for who’s working on the waste, recycling management inquire muda out in Switherland, we continue to work and engage with the CIP fellows even after the program to ensure that we’re supporting them in their endeavors.

“This partnership has also provided our employees with an opportunity for mentors, facilitators and supporters on an individual basis with  zip ties. So we’re very grateful for that  as an organisation tried to encourage our employees to be part of a community and support and this program has been helpful in helping us provide opportunities for our employees,”she said.

Another, keynote speaker, Henry Kaestner,said “the theme of the conference ‘Redefining the leadership of social innovation’ when i think about redefining leadership of social innovation and my best way to share my thoughts on this is to focus on entrepreneurs who are thriving entrepreneurship in a dynamic performance.

“I want the share three case studies with you that will exemplify for you some inspired leadership that is doing incredible things in the social innovation space.

“And also some key tables that will demonstrate the promise of technologies you’d see all the entrepreneurs are taking problems and turning them into opportunities and the level of boldness and skill they go about with their usual business, they are not taking at small level but at a large level, systemic changes, anyone who builds a hospital in this part of the continent knows the challenge they would face from the shortage of doctors, lack of cordination, problems to acquire medications we only have 3 per cent of health care workers

“I always believe the future is Africa we always have to think outside the box we came up with this brilliant idea of visual consultation with a doctor, deliver drugs to anywhere , this is an innovation that was adapted to our health care system due to our health care system  with this example we have been able to build one of the largest  technology enable health care system across the continent we have 65 hospitals/clinics serving 1 Millon patients in Nigeria,Ghana,Kenya and Egypt.

“Andela is a company I’m always excited about  Andela is with the idea that  The brilliance is even distributed but opportunity is not.

“Andela saw an issue with Nigeria ,Nigeria has a problem of high unemployment and we know we have alot brilliant young people, the problem is not the brilliance but the opportunity and also shortage of  talent engineers developers in the West , we have these amount of young people who seek opportunities to add value but simply have no means to do so.  Andela has created high value employment for young people. Andela is valued over 1b dollars it’s an exciting  win for us and employees and investors.

“He said he always want you to remember as an entrepreneur your model should solve problems and values  you need to leverage technology or you’d be excepted you need to be bold in Pan-African and skill, we need major solutions. don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young but set an example for the believers , in love , combat, speech, purity in fate so go forward and set an example.”

Mojibade Sosanya also commented that, the aim of the anniversary is to call attention of people to socio opportunity in Africa, it has been twenty years now of raising leaders.

She said, sovereignity capital comprises of family of funds across ventures private equity in the United States and South Africa, Asia sovereignty capital invest in leaders whose fate and values create a work space culture and also on business excess and community citizenship, Henry Kaestner is a co-founder  of the public wireless combined with the two companies and company values, fate, family,work and fitness in that order .

Henry’s past professional life including positions in several   institutional firms focused on energy trading based in New York city , Henry and wife Mary with their three teenage sons.