AfriRise

In the United States Of America, the rate of unemployment stands at 3.6%. In the developing world, the rate of unemployment is approximately 60% despite there being 525 million internet users with access to information in Africa, a bigger percentage people below 35 years of age. This is the leading contributor to low quality of living. To help solve this problem, we created AfriRise, a platform that consists of a mobile app and social media chatbots to increase access to the latest scholarships, jobs or business funding opportunities among Africans. The platform leverages on technology to increase access to verifiable opportunities from trusted sources to young people while also matching and notifying them with opportunities that would suit their skills or preferences. We hope to reduce rate of unemployment and subsequently reduce increased crime rate, violent extremism and widespread poverty.

According to Africa Development Bank, of Africa's nearly 420 million youth aged 15-35, one-third are unemployed and discouraged, another third are vulnerably employed, and only one in six is in wage employment. Youth face roughly double the unemployment rate of adults, with significant variation by country. Despite universities churning hundreds of thousands of graduates every year, the high unemployment rate stands at 60%. Very few young people are aware of business startup capital opportunities or are not well prepared for the job market. Even though the internet offers access to a lot of information, there is still a gap in access to trusted information, which has discouraged many young people from taking on new opportunities, despite high number of internet users and increased smartphone penetration.

AfriRise seeks to increase access to trusted information on business, self development and job opportunities. The platform consists of a mobile application that requires users to download and get notified whenever new opportunities are available. It also consists of automated chat bots e.g on facebook messenger that uses artificial intelligence to interact with users and gives relevant opportunities based on conversations. To ensure all interests are met, the platform contains a lot of opportunities that cut across different sectors. To ensure our users are not overwhelmed by too much information, the application shows only relevant opportunities over time with continued usage.

AfriRise targets young people between the age of 15 and 35 who might be senior highschool students, college students, young professionals or young adults. Our platform covers all aspects of opportunities that include scholarships for students who may want to advance academically and increase their chances of employment, jobs for those who are ready for the job market or grants and funding for those that intend to start or that are in business. At AfriRise, we continually meet our target users in schools, universities and conduct trainings to prepare them for the job market. We also work with companies and startups to provide capacity building.

Information is power. We therefore believe that it can be used as a tool for social good. A tool to empower young people by showing them possibilities and giving them multiple chances to succeed. By giving access to information on quality education, jobs and business capital, we are potentially fighting the elephant of unemployment, whose symptoms include high crime rates, violent extremism and widespread poverty.

There are none or few opportunity websites or applications that leverage on artificial intelligence to ensure success rate. We believe that, sharing relevant opportunities goes beyond users selecting their areas of interests as some people never know what they want at first. By leveraging on Artificial Intelligence, AfriRise is able to match users to opportunities that best suits them based on their interactions, thus increasing their chances to succeed. AfriRise also leverages on existing platforms as a service. For example, one does not need to download our application. By simply interacting with our facebook automated chat bot, users are able to get the latest relevant opportunities with just a few clicks. To ensure that users access relevant and verifiable opportunities, AfriRise is using block chain technology to flag and remove opportunities that may seem suspicious or not from verifiable sources.

AfriRise uses block chain technology to ensure transparency and sharing of verifiable and trusted opportunities. It also takes advantage of Artificial intelligence to provide users with the most relevant opportunities for higher success rates.

With so much information online, most companies provide mobile applications as alternatives to their website. Over time, mobile applications have proven to increase user interactions compared to websites. Most media companies are fast moving to mobile based solutions to tap onto a fast growing number of smartphone users. AfriRise is not any different, it uses existing technology to share information that has direct impact on personal and professional developments of individuals.

Our first prototype entailed sharing opportunities via email to test

viability e.g how many people were interested shown by read emails and
user retention rate, interests among many other factors. We later setup
an opportunities website like most of our competitors and gathered a
lot of insights. It was expensive and time consuming to create content
in a space with several opportunities options or sources. While we were
aware that there was still limited access to trusted information and
difficulty in tracking successes, we turned our competitors into
partners and created a platform that filters and puts all relevant
opportunities from several sources into one place. At AfriRise, we are constantly innovating and changing based user needs to ensure that we are continually providing value to our users.

Currently serving 7,000 people

Will be serving 90,000 in a year

We hope to serve about 400,000 in 5 years.

We intend to intensify partnerships with clubs and societies in highschools and colleges to enable us build a community of people who will be inspired to take on new opportunities and empower others through their successes. Our expansion strategy is to start a reward system that will seek to recognize and award young people in Sub Sahara Africa that have been fearless in taking on new opportunities and succeeded in them. We hope to inspire trust and inspire more young people to  join our community of empowered youth through AfriRise awards.

Majority of the youth are not as aggressive in taking on new opportunities while some don't easily believe in themselves or the sources of information. In Kenya for example, young people consider job application as a full time job as several companies don't take time to respond or give personalized feedback to applicants, while some fraudsters take advantage of desperation among young people to cone them in the name of opportunities. We are therefore forced to spend more time and capital in marketing and sensitization to defeat the notion in the minds of people.

We plan to continuously sensitize young people through social media, physical meetups and trainings in schools, clubs and societies. Through the Awards system, we hope to inspire confidence and trust by showcasing real testimonials and impact on peoples lives. We also hope to build a community of opportunists and community ambassadors who will pledge to help others e.g in applying or review of applications for any opportunities to ensure more successes.

3 full time

Levit Nudi (CEO & Founder) - Background in Forensics from Kenyatta university, business and entrepreneurship from Notre Dame University and several years experience in failed and successful award winning businesses. He is also a self taught software engineer in charge of the technical implementation.

Craig Omore - Background in law from Strathmore university with specific interest in business law. He is in charge of community engagement and partnerships with businesses.

Brian Symons - Has has a background in fine arts and several years experience in digital marketing, content management and animations design. He is in charge of marketing and user centered design thinking processes.

I believe our team is best positioned to make AfriRise even much better than it is, thus increasing impact on young peoples lives. To this point, AfriRise is as a result of each of our individual efforts.

Opportunity Desk (One of our sources of content)

Our community also consists of incubators and hubs such as Nailab, Chandaria Business & Incubation Center, iBiz Africa and several other student driven clubs and societies that utilize our platforms to share opportunities.

County Government Of Kisumu, Kenya. Provides content to jobs and access to opportunities to its residents via whatsApp chatbot. (https://bit.ly/2vJcNRg)

Our major source of revenue is from advertising and skill development. We publish adverts on our platforms as well as engage in paid digital skills development classes for young people. With rapidly changing technology space, digital skills have become essential in modern day work places and thus created a high demand due to its necessity.

We hope to create attain a sustainable revenue growth through advertising as well as explore other sources of income like capacity building for companies and startups and skill development for young people. We hope to expand our scope of training to empower more young people with different technical and soft skills that will prepare them for business and the job markets.

I believe Solve will provide a great exposure and credibility to AfriRise. This will help to defeat the negative notion among young people that would hinder them from taking on new opportunities. Looking at what some of the previous applicants have benefited through this program, I also believe that we will be better positioned to be paired with the right partners / mentors who will offer valuable input in terms of sustainable business model and growth hacking.

We always seek to improve our solution to provide value to users as well as ensure sustainability. We are therefore keen on getting more specialized advisors and support partners who can help us in growth hacking.

We would be interested in partnering with MIT Edx to make courses available in Africa offline as part of our skill development and youth empowerment initiative.

AfriRise platform does not take any personal user information, thereby eliminating any chances of discrimination based on gender, geographical location, tribe or social class. We believe that AfriRise would be in a better position to help refugees to access quality education, jobs and subsequently become self reliant and empowered. Being open to constantly innovating and improving our platform, we hope to tailor make AfriRise for the marginalized communities and displaced persons to ensure they are up to date with the latest opportunities from trusted sources.