April 15, 2019 will hopefully mark the day a new phrase enters popular discourse about how our economic futures could play out. The term “4th Industrial Revolution” has come to embody the conversation around the supply-side of the jobs debate -skills and education. 



We hope to drive new research, discussion and policy around the demand-side of employment by deeply exploring entrepreneurship as a career &#8211; particularly for students of high potential. 



What if skilled students with options chose an entrepreneurship path and hired their friends and peers along the way? What does Africa’s youth employment situation look like if this happens?



The Anzisha Scenario campaign concept was
born after heated discussions and exchanges internally in response to a
research paper that was released in 2018, and the resulting coverage it got in
the media. The research took a position that older founders in the US have been
more successful as entrepreneurs generally, and, particularly, when it comes to
scale and job creation. The ensuing media and social media coverage seemed to
quickly extrapolate this to an insight that applied globally. Emails quickly
circulated across the entrepreneurship and education ecosystems, echoing the
sentiments of the research and its impact for programming.



I had a particularly strong reaction to the
report. It’s not that the research is wrong (it isn’t), it’s that it:



<ul><li>Is pretty obvious. Prior work,
life and management experience should make you a better entrepreneur when
you’re older, in the same way it should make you a more successful manager or
leader within an existing business.</li><li>Inadvertently positions the
problem of youth unemployment as largely unsolvable by young people themselves.
But with not enough job opportunities to start with, if only people with 15+
years’ experience can create other jobs, we’re in a heap of trouble.</li><li>Is quickly supported by those
who have followed traditional education and career pathways, crowding out other
experience pathways as less legitimate. Anyone who got a great degree, and then
worked for a great company, is immediately validated and pre-qualified as a
better scale entrepreneur through formal training. Few have that opportunity.</li></ul>



Having had this research kick off some of
our own thinking, we started to look at our own evidence and work. And this
then became the next driver of investing in a campaign as a pan-African,
inclusive, multi-stakeholder scenario planning exercise.



We have seen, time and again, young
entrepreneurs start out from the very youngest of ages, and slowly build
careers –in the same way any other career professional would. Those that are
well supported throughout tend to be more successful, just as a well-supported
professional would be on their path to senior management. We will be presenting
these stories in a Hall of Fame campaign later in the year.



We also have seen clear evidence that
managers hire from their peer group in terms of age. Older entrepreneurs hire
older professionals. Young entrepreneurs hire young. The only people really
willing to hire 19 year olds without question are 23 year old entrepreneurs (or
thereabouts).



We have seen young people of high potential
and with options – they are actively recruited by universities and employers –
choose entrepreneurship.



The combination of this and many other
thoughts is part of the discussion we want to have. Is the Anzisha Scenario
possible? What are the drivers, barriers and opportunities? What are the roles
of parents, teachers, students, policy-makers and other stakeholders in making
the choice of “entrepreneurship as a career” desirable and supported, with
appropriate income as you grow? The Anzisha Scenario as a conversation on
campus has already begun to influence our own curriculum planning as our faculty
think about their role in promoting and supporting entrepreneurship as a career
path.



We’ve already had two stakeholder workshops
with cross-sector representatives from South Africa, Mauritius, Egypt, Rwanda,
Kenya, Zimbabwe and Botswana. (Thanks to ALA, ALU, ALX, Harambee, Allan Gray
Orbis Foundation, Driven Entrepreneurs, E-squared, Imagine Scholar, McKinsey,
Nova Pioneer, RLabs, and Startup Academy).



On April 15, during the inaugural Very
Young Entrepreneur Education and Acceleration Summit, we’ll host our first
experts’ panel and launch the draft position paper. Please follow or contribute
to the conversation using the hashtag #AnzishaScenario. Make sure to also watch
highlights from the Summit at anzisha.org/summit. Let’s see if we as a
community can put young people at the center of solving the employment
challenges we collectively face.



&#8211; Josh Adler 



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Tag: Anzisha Summit

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

The Anzisha Summit – Towards A Future Driven By Africa’s Youngest Entrepreneurs