Entrepreneurship Education
Our programs cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset, empowering youth to create opportunities for themselves and others.
The Company Program provides introductory entrepreneurship education for high school students. The program empowers students to fill a need or solve a problem in their community by teaching them practical skills required to conceptualize, capitalize, and manage their business venture. Students learn how businesses function and soft skills instrumental to success, such as brainstorming, consensus building, critical reading, gathering and organizing information, group and self-assessment, interpreting production inventory, and oral and written communication.
Volunteers from the local business community employ a variety of hands-on activities and technological supplements to challenge students to use innovative thinking. The business skills students learn in this after-school program will prove valuable as they consider higher education and career choices. Students work in groups within their schools and classrooms to develop business ideas, test them in markets, and start and run businesses throughout the school year while being coached by professionals who volunteer in the program. They also have access to business leaders as mentors who guide them throughout the process and help them access finance.
At the end of each school year, the student companies will come together for a national Company of the Year competition where they will pitch their business to a panel of judges and win prizes.
The Company of the Year (COY) Competition is Africa's premier pitch competition for high school youth and the culmination of JA's highly acclaimed Company Program®, which teaches introductory business to thousands of students in Africa.
Students learn how to start and run their own businesses from capitalization at the beginning of the academic year, going through developing and marketing a product or service and running their companies. They then compete nationally, with the winners representing their respective countries at the Africa level.
COY allows young people to demonstrate their business acumen and spirit of entrepreneurship in a competitive environment. It is one of six similar regional competitions that take place annually within Junior Achievement's global network.
In advance of the competition, students submit their company reports, which summarise the company's business operations and reports.
Stage pitches present competitors the opportunity to talk about their businesses to a panel of judges drawn from the leadership of local and global organizations. Students outline their accomplishments and challenges of their businesses. JA makes every effort to elevate the level of expectation of the students each year.
Here, students can demonstrate their products to the competition's judges, answering questions about the need identification, product functionality, target markets, etc.
The Board room experience mimics real life situations where business performance is scrutinized. Judges ask any questions about the company, probe company leaders on their understanding of how and why the company performed as it did, lessons learnedfrom the experience, and how these lessons might be applied in a new business context.
JA DEEP is an online, interactive entrepreneurship curriculum created specifically for young African learners, including those who live in countries or attend schools where JA is not present. JA DEEP builds on JA’s existing entrepreneurship programs (JA Company Program and ITS TYME) in an online format that teaches the same principles in an engaging and fun way. JA DEEP also builds digital literacy skills in young people as they explore entrepreneurship opportunities where technology can help solve problems within their communities.
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