By Chinenye Anuforo
The University of Lagos (UNILAG), yesterday, hosted the second edition of the UNILAG Unilever – UNICEF Future-X Campus Ambassadors Programme (FUCAP) Career Seminar, an initiative aimed at equipping young Nigerians with essential skills for a successful transition from academia to the professional world.
Delivering her goodwill message, Celine Lafoucriere, Chief of the UNICEF Field Office for South West Nigeria and Lead of Generation Unlimited Nigeria, emphasised the shared commitment of UNICEF and Unilever to youth empowerment. “Our partnership with Unilever through FUCAP is rooted in one shared goal, helping young people like you make a smooth, successful leap from learning to earning,” Lafoucriere stated.
She highlighted the significant impact of FUCAP, revealing that, “This specific partnership has a target of impacting 700,000 students with skills in three years. In the space of two years, it has already reached over five million students and has impacted over 600,000 already. So, kudos to the partnership, which has practically already reached its targets in the space of two years.” She expressed hope that in its final year, the programme might even reach a million impacted individuals.
She specifically commended UNILAG students for their exceptional leadership and innovation within the programme.
“FUCAP isn’t just about skills, it is about belief. Belief in the talent, resilience and leadership of young Nigerians,” she added, encouraging students to actively engage in the seminar’s offerings, which included CV clinics, WASH innovation idea pitches and internship pathway explorations.
She reaffirmed UNICEF’s dedication to supporting young people, stating, “We will continue working to open doors, build bridges and help ensure that your ideas and ambitions translate into real-world impact.”
Also speaking at the event, Oreoluwa Dina, HR and Employer Brand Project Specialist at Unilever, Nigeria, elaborated on the programme’s objectives. “The Future X Unilever Campus Ambassadors Programme is a partnership with UNICEF and it aims to impact young people across Nigeria with the relevant and essential skills that they need to be able to get ready for the place of work,” Dina explained.
She acknowledged a common gap in new hires, stating, “We have noticed that sometimes when we get young people in the workplace, we see that there are some skills that they are lacking or that they don’t have and so, the need for the programme.”
Dina confirmed the programme’s success in achieving its goals stating, “We have achieved our objective from last year up till now. Last year, the initiative impacted over 200,000 young people through offline seminars and online courses focusing on essential topics, like CV building and entrepreneurship. For this year, we have been able to impact over 150,000 people and counting, because the year is not yet over,” she added, emphasising the provision of internship opportunities to allow students to apply their newly acquired skills.
Looking ahead, Dina stated: “We will continue to bring up more courses to continue to up-skill students on various aspects of workplace readiness.”
Professor Afolabi Lesi, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Development Services, University of Lagos, highlighted the programme’s alignment with UNILAG’s future-ready agenda. “The future-ready agenda is the agenda of our Vice-Chancellor, Professor Folasade Ogunsola and she has envisaged this university when she said future-ready means that we are ready to anticipate the problems of the future and to build the capacity to be able to address those problems,” Lesi explained.
He stressed the importance of empowering students to tackle future challenges, saying, “We cannot be talking about addressing problems of now and the future without talking about empowering our students. “We are in the business of knowledge economy, creating manpower development. We have to empower our students and our faculty and our staff to be able to identify and address the problems that confront us as a society.
“We recognise that there are going to be problems in the future that we have not even seen now. The person who will address the problem of the future must be able to recognise what those problems are and be able to have those skills to be able to deal with those problems and address them. And it starts with building the human being that we need.
“So, this programme of building the next generation of leaders and empowering them with those soft skills that they need to be able to successfully navigate society is certainly in line with the agenda of our current Vice-Chancellor.”
On his own part, Bharat Kundra, Skill Development Specialist, UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited Division highlighted Nigeria as the pioneering country for a significant partnership between UNICEF and Unilever, aimed at empowering young people with essential skills and opportunities.
He pointed out the core belief of Generation Unlimited stating, “Our young people have unlimited potential. They are at the forefront of innovation, comfortable with being uncomfortable, and possess immense agility, creative ideas and a strong risk-taking ability. These are crucial factors for the future workforce of Nigeria and the entire world.”
Kundra explained that while Nigeria boasts over 100 universities, the joint UNICEF-Unilever programme began its three-year partnership by targeting 20 universities and polytechnics. This strategic decision, he noted, was based on the concentration of young people in these institutions and their alignment with the government structures, allowing for efficient reach to tens of thousands of students on the cusp of entering the workforce. “Twenty universities are just the beginning. This will expand. We cannot stop,” Kundra affirmed.
The partnership, which set an initial target of impacting 700,000 young people over three years, has already reached an impressive 600,000. Kundra emphasised that the ultimate goal of Generation Unlimited globally is to help 20 million young people transition from learning to earning, from school to work by 2030, with the potential to reach far more, especially in a country like Nigeria, where approximately 70 percent of the population is under 30.