The Future Awards Africa, The Future Project, Chude Jideonwo, Adebola Williams

As part of the 100-city tour for The Future Awards Africa’s (TFAA) 10th anniversary, the awards visited conflict zones across the North of Nigeria last week – to highlight challenges, spotlight inspiring stories and set up hubs to solve problems at scale. The Future Awards Africa is a set of prizes given annually to celebrate and accelerate innovation, creativity and enterprise amongst young Africans aged 18 – 31. It has produced over 150 winners and over 1550 nominees since its first edition in 2006.

It is presented in conjunction with The Future Project, which has a mandate to build empowered citizens across Africa, through (inclusive) enterprise and (active) citizenship. Founded by the Chude Jideonwo and Adebola Williams, TFP, has a network of funders and partners including the Tony Elumelu Foundation, Ford Foundation, the US Government, First Bank, MTN, The Canadian Embassy, HP, the Nigerian Government and the British Council. Its works have spanned Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Uganda, Malawi, Cameroon, Somalia, Equitorial Guinea, Ivory Coast and Kenya.

Team awaiting response from the army before going in to Chibok

Team with a young girl

The delegation, according to a release by Red Communication, a Public Relations and Communication firm, was led by the co-founder of TFAA, Chude Jideonwo and visited Chibok, Mubi and Yola. The tour, led by project managers Bukonla Adebakin and Seun Oluyemi had previously visited Enugu, Banjul, Badagry, Ibadan, Akure, Port Harcourt and Kano.

The tour has a three-pronged focus: a) re-focus attention on the issues young people are facing across the continent, b) the case studies of how TFAA’s global brain trust has solved these issues and then c) set up hubs in each city – made up of past winners, nominees, partners and
volunteers at community-levels – to solve these problems.

Children at the IDP Camp, Kano

“The stories and the people we have met on this trip have confirmed some of our worst fears, but more importantly also fired up our resolve,” said Jideonwo after the tour. “There is so much work we have to do, and we are building a network of problem solvers across the continent to
engage, solve and sustain the solutions to these problems. We are celebrating 10 years of TFAA, but more importantly, we are fired up to begin 10 more years of building entrepreneurs, supporting change makers and transforming societies.”

The one-year tour, which kicked off in October 2015, has now visited Kano, Banjul, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Enugu, Abuja, Lagos, Yola, Mubi and Chibok.

TFAA team

“The challenges we saw on this tour are enough to make you worry,” said Mohamed Diaby, a member of the Central Working Committee, from Abidjan. From young people feeling their own communities and countries to communicable diseases from rescued individuals coming back into town, rebuilding of clinic/hospital, school, bridge and markets, education, employment, drug use, to cities that urgently demand government reconstruction, there is so much work left to be done. We are determined to lead an army of young people, through our hubs, to do this urgent work, to solve these problems.”

Hubs have now been set up in Mubi with the Initiative for Human Rights, Yola with Centre for Caring, Empowerment and Peace Initiative (CCEPI) and Chibok with the Red Cross. These hubs will work together with the Global TFAA Secretariat to pull resources and media attention to solve the identified problems in each community.

The next stop for the tour is Johannesburg, South Africa, after which phase one of the tours will conclude. The event will be hosted in Lagos on Sunday, 6 December, 2015.