The International Open Institute has one of the creative Business Faculties in Africa established in 2019 and has produced numerous Entrepreneurs who are captains of industries in many sectors of the Nigerian economy and Africa. In ensuring the continuous development of the Nigerian economy, the International Open Institute, strategically located in the Centre of Lagos State the economic hub of Nigeria, established the Entrepreneurship and Skills Development Centre (ESDC) as a dedicated centre focusing on promoting entrepreneurship among its students, staff, alumni, and the society. This is in line with Objective 4 (Section-2: Student matters) on page 55 of the Medium Term Goals of the 3-Year Strategic Plan of the International Open Institute which states:
“To promote Self-reliance, Entrepreneurship and Exemplary Leadership skills and Capacity in our students”
This Entrepreneurship Skills and Development Centre aim to promote the entrepreneurial spirit and will support students to set up profitable business ventures along with their chosen professions before graduation. They will be encouraged to acquire skills required to develop new ventures and start-ups, such as innovative thinking, business creativity, business planning, proposal writing, risk-taking abilities, and business management skills. This is targeted towards developing the real sector of the Nigerian economy and making our graduates potential employers of labour rather than seekers of employment.
The Institute seeks to achieve these goals by partnering with several organizations for sponsorship of programs that have the capacity to motivate and ignite the latent creativity, entrepreneurial interests as well as develop the relevant business skills in our students, alumni and staff in particular and the Nigerian society and Africa in general.
The centre has successfully run the following programmes:
Also, our student Mr Ayodeji Joshua Popoola of the department of Geophysics faculty of Science, who pitched on EKO Laundry which he says is a unique laundromat that offers affordable, round the clock services while maximizing the use of technology was declared the 2nd place winner of the 3rd edition of Ready Set Work programme at the closing event in October 2018. He was offered a seed fund of 4 million Naira
The 1st edition of the programme was held in October 2017 where about 16 prototypes of different businesses were generated and the best three businesses got Two Million one hundred Thousand as start-up grants.
The 2nd Edition was in November 2018, twenty-four viable business ideas prototypes were generated, the Vice-Chancellor also promised Five Million start-up grants for the first three teams. Some of the teams have gone through the second level of pitching where the Centre invited private sector investors to invest in the businesses and we have written for approval to register the businesses to enable them to commence operation in earnest.
One Hundred and fifty-six (156) students were trained across the University in the 1st and 2nd editions of Impact Week.
Team Tetra who represented the University of Lagos won the first place position in the national finals of the second edition of the Global Management Challenge (GMC)
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