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By Merit Ibe
To prepare young Nigerians in our tertiary institutions for future leadership, workplace management, job creation, skill acquisition for global business competitiveness, Enactus Nigeria, a non governmental and nonprofit organisation recently rewarded students for their outstanding innovative solutions and entrepreneurship.
In the recently concluded 2024 Enactus year with its annual flagship program, the Enactus Nigeria 2024 National Competition, the Enactus team from Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University, Markurdi (formerly University of Agriculture, Makurdi) emerged as champions following their outstanding innovative solution, Ecoresin.
Ecoresin is a project committed to providing a sustainable solution to the plastic waste crisis. Through Ecoresin, the team developed biodegradable polymers using agricultural and plant-based materials such as cassava and water hyacinth. These polymers are used to produce various everyday items, from shopping bags to seedling wrappers and packaging for foods, care products and pharmaceutical products. The biodegradable polymers are designed to disappear back into nature without leaving any harmful traces. They can be converted into fertilizer through decomposition, promoting sustainable farming.
Enactus Nigeria also gave out awards and cash prizes to other deserving tertiary institutions that participated with their innovative solutions they created in their communities in the special competition category for both the ACT Foundation Leadership Challenge and the Schneider Electric Battery Innovation Challenge.
Enactus Nigeria, which aims to transform Nigerian youths in the tertiary institutions into resourceful, purposeful and values-driven entrepreneurial leaders and social innovators, has made significant impact by engaging the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders to use innovation and business principles to improve the world.
The Country Director, Michael Ajayi said the competition is a showcase of the ingenuity and the outcome of over 12 months of hard work by the Enactus Students.
“It brings together Enactus student leaders and academic leaders from over 20 tertiary institutions, as well as business leaders for the celebration of innovation and impact.
“One of the interesting things about the national competition is that it’s an expression of students’ ingenuity, creativity and doggedness and all of that.
It is also a reflection of the amount of work that Enactus Nigeria has done in recruiting the students and training them in a bid to build their capacity.
“At the final round, we had judges who were business leaders from different organisations like KPMG, Chevron Nigeria, Schneider Electric Foundation, African Capital Alliance, Coca Cola and the rest of them. These judges reviewed the presentations and ranked the four teams based on their performance, which must be the most relevant, innovative, scalable, impactful project, social enterprise that can transform the life of people across the country. Once the judges identified that team, we named that team number one, the team now becomes, Enactus Nigeria National Champion for 2024. That team will get the opportunity to represent Nigeria at the Enactus World Cup, which holds in different countries every year. This year, it will hold in Kazakhstan, in the city of Astana. So, the winner will go there to represent Enactus Nigeria to compete for the title of the Enactus World Cup Champion”.
But beyond the competition, Mr Ajayi said, “the important thing is how this Enactus programme is structured to transform Nigerian students into resourceful, purposeful and value driven entrepreneurial leaders and social innovators. We are able to achieve this because of the structure we have put in place. On each campus where we are active, we recruit a group of students from different departments, different faculties, different levels, and backgrounds. Successful candidates are inducted into the Enactus.
