NYOTA

Nyota is a SaaS, with a job-board and CV-library, providing opportunities for equitable job access by helping the youth in their job search through IT trainings and professional visibility. 

The problem we wish to solve is unemployment in Africa : we tackle the lack of decent employment opportunities and young job seekers' unfair barriers to the labour market.

If educational rates have gone up, graduate employability has not necessarily followed through in many African countries. Youth unemployment in Africa is raised by several trends : quality-work deficits, mismatches between skills demanded by employers and those of graduates, low quality of higher education, lack of career guidance and counseling in university. Audrey Cheng (founder of a learning accelerator in Nairobi) states that it takes on average 5 years for a university student to get a job in Kenya, after graduation. 

(Source here, analysis of job prospects with or without a matrix in South Africa).

The average unemployment rate in Sub Saharan Africa stands at 7.66% today, against 7.11% globally, with some countries such as South Africa, recording a 34% unemployment rate. (World Bank Data). In 2015, a third of Africa's 420 million people aged between 15 and 35 were unemployed and another third were “vulnerably” employed.

More telling is the number of applicants that an average job attracts : a standard job in Kenya receives on average 2,417 applications (for a receptionist/admin assistant task) (ROAM Data). This number reaches 250 on average in South Africa, but with 75% of job applicants not being qualified on average. Whereas this is caused by job shortages, it also reveals other underlying issues on the labor market : misunderstanding of job requirements, mismatches, the scarcity of decent jobs, the lack of visibility for employment opportunities and the low quality of job applications. 

Interestingly, ROAM’s database analysis revealed that “many candidates were indeed qualified for other available jobs, but did not necessarily apply for these.” This points to another trend : many people apply to formal jobs but do not fit the requirements and have not heard of opportunities that match their skills.

The high numbers of applications also create time delays for HRs to go through each application and coterminously reduce candidates’ chances of finding the right job.

This is the type of skill mismatch and difficulties and barriers we want to target at NYOTA, with a CV library and an algorithm, helping job seekers and recruiters “match” more easily and thus facilitate recruitment processes, to create economic opportunities and help the youth hear about employment opportunities.

NYOTA is a CV-library which (i) helps African underserved communities gain access to the job market and visibility to the eyes of recruiters (in services, financial and IT sectors) and (ii) facilitates upskilling and reskilling for women, with IT / coding trainings and scholarships, to increase their likelihood of finding a decent job. 

Candidates, students, graduates looking for employment opportunities in Africa can post their CVs on our platform, thereby creating a CV-library. We then grant access to this CV-library to human resources (HR) teams, for them to find their future employees. The platform uses an algorithm to help HRs find the right candidate, according to filters and the corresponding job opportunity (sector / experiences / country), for recruiters and candidates “to match”.

Our aim is to help vulnerable communities, women and youth, which are struggling to find employment opportunities in the 5 countries that we are implemented in (Ivory Coast, Benin, Rwanda, Morocco, South Africa). As such, we not only give access to a CV library to recruiters but organize CV-writing workshops and interview preparations. We create pathways to upskill and reskill candidates with specific skill training, filling in technological and digitally literacy gaps. To do so, we have asked the companies we work with what type of skill set they require from candidates (python, excel…etc). Based on these conversations, we are organizing a coding program, whose participants (women aged between 15-18) will be linked to our partner IT and Tech companies after course completion, for professional opportunities - with scholarships. Our goal is to establish a direct link between participants and recruiting IT firms, for them to land a job or internship.

We are organizing these sessions with the Fondation Vallet, which organizes artificial intelligence summer schools in Cotonou. (Ecole d’Eté d’Intelligence Artificielle, EEIA). 

Our solution serves the African youth (i) and the African diaspora (ii). 

On the one hand, our solution serves job seekers, with a strong focus on the African youth (i) students, recent graduates and women, who had no or little career guidance during their studies or women who had no higher education - in Rwanda, the Ivory Coast, Benin and Morocco. 

The youth and especially women, in several east and west african countries, do not necessarily have access to career guidance during their education and many of them do not have access to a transparent job market or education to join the job market. For instance, without the right connections, it may be practically impossible to have an internship in Cotonou or Casablanca, despite having a degree. Digital literacy is also not homogenous across the youth, creating higher barriers to job access. Finding a decent job without higher education is also increasingly difficult.

On the other hand, our solution also serves Africans from the diaspora (ii) who wish to go back to their home countries but cannot find decent employment opportunities, and Africans wishing to hear about professional opportunities in neighboring or distant African countries, where certain IT sectors are booming.

Our solution targets these issues by creating a transparent job market, where candidates can unanimously be connected to recruiters and considered for job offers. NYOTA further helps candidates to gain visibility, by helping them present their qualities, experiences and skills in the most professional ways, with CV writing workshops. We organize webinars to present hiring opportunities / different sectors / give information about the labor market, and create a community and connections between firms and candidates. Doing so, we help women, the youth, the African diaspora to find employment and possibly to move back to their home countries, to join a technology sector start-up (which they couldn’t do in their home country) or to have financial stability, with a decent job. Fixing the labor market’s information asymmetry can change several peoples’ lives.

Furthermore, coding educational sessions, organized with leading IT firms in Africa, will enable young women to obtain jobs in the technological sector. To ensure employment, our training sessions are co-designed with IT firms, for candidates to be upskilled to perfectly match recruitment requirements. As such, the solution gives access to a training which is directly connected to a firm and more broadly to a sector which is growing and increasingly employing people across the continent.

Our team is composed of 12 people, which are all students or recent graduates. We therefore understand how difficult entering the job market is and can think of a tailored approach to facilitate job market entry. Coming from different African countries and some of us having worked on recruitment tasks in the past, we also have a particularly sharp understanding of the experiences of those we serve.

We initially created a student consultancy group together, called Africa Youth Consulting, where we worked for different entities across the continent (SMEs, Start ups, NGOs…). Whilst working for different clients, we noticed that certain recruitment issues came back in patterns (interns being recruited based on the wrong criteria, internship-access barriers, HRs receiving 2 000s of CVs which did not match their job offers, poor connection between recruiters and candidates from other regions). We therefore thought that a platform and an algorithm could very much offer more visibility for candidates and smaller start-ups alike, thereby reducing unemployment rates and helping HRs identify the right candidates. 

Our team is also well connected with local schools, across different countries, as a few co-founders are from Benin, one from the Ivory Coast, one from Morocco and one from Algeria; which has helped us create partnerships with schools to organize CV writing workshops and employment opportunities presentations.

4 of the co-founders have worked with the Fondation Vallet over the last two years, volunteering to help them organize and lead their artificial intelligence summer school in Cotonou. Whilst taking part in this project and giving classes, they realized how competent students were, and how resourceful they were, but how they seriously lacked information about the labor market and had no guidance to enter the professional world. Teaching artificial intelligence or key skills is one thing, but creating direct connections with artificial intelligence students and the right recruiting firms is another.

We have engaged with potential users, worked with them over the last 2 years and designed the solution with them in many ways, both with students / candidates and HRs.

On the candidate's side, we have had discussions with schools based in Europe to understand African diaspora students’ needs, schools in the Ivory Coast, Benin and Rwanda to understand how we could strengthen graduates and firms’ connections and which precise barriers prevented them from finding a decent job. Having taken part in the Fondation Vallet’s summer schools for artificial intelligence in Cotonou, we asked their older participants (18-20) how they conducted job search and if they had platforms where they could directly have access to job openings. 85% of them answered they did not know where to look or how to engage with firms and would use a job board if given the chance. 

Regarding HRs, our board members are composed of Headhunting units (for instance, Morgan Philips’ Headhunting), whose team has helped us hone our solution. We have interviewed over 100 HRs and CEOs to ask them what their recruitment barriers consisted of. We have therefore designed the solution to not only not help them recruit faster / better but also for them to see candidates they had not previously thought of, had little connection to or would be a great fit, but need complementary training.

Having been working with 8 companies so far, we are also testing the solution and shaping it based on different returns we have. We have specifically engaged in discussions with IT-based companies, to see if they would be willing to recruit candidates after they had followed a coding training session. We will be joining the Cyber Africa Forum conference, taking place in Abidjan in march, to discuss this further with bigger companies.

Our solution provides a significantly improved approach to unemployment, by increasing candidates’ likelihood of finding jobs (through trainings designed with recruiters), and by having access to a platform which directly connects them with employers.

Many people do not know where to turn to to find a job in East Africa, and most recruitment is linked to “word of mouth” chances. Our solution tackles this problem with an algorithm to enable a rapid match between HRs and candidates based on motivations, sectors, and country - enabling HRs to see profiles they would not have seen in the past, due to the overwhelming number of applications received on a daily basis for formal jobs opening (on average 2,000 applications in East Africa.) 

Our solution also significantly increases the chances of young women to be hired in higher-paying firms, with decent and stable jobs, within the IT sector - as they would follow a training session for coding and IT skills directly required and related to firms’ activities. This could change recruitment patterns and lead the way to the creation of highly skilled employees / new hiring patterns, whilst filling a digital literacy gap, if recruiters progressively get used to training future employees rather then turning them down due the educational barriers they previously faced.

This algorithm could have a broader positive impact on recruitment processes at large in Africa as more firms join the job board and more HRs use the CV library and algorithm. It would fasten the pace of recruitment processes, increase their transparency and could also trigger changes in universities’ career services. Indeed, as we provide more career focused courses and workshops in schools and create additional links between graduates and firms, we believe that our partner universities would more regularly provide such services. Our aim is to create a real ecosystem between graduates, schools and firms; to smoothen recruitment processes. 

Training Impact Goal : Our impact goals for next year are varied, but the main ones involve working with an increasing number of schools and universities, to provide relevant training to make candidates from all backgrounds more attractive to local and international companies. We aim to organize monthly training sessions in the next year (i). (CV-writing workshops, cover letter writing workshops, interview prep, excel, ppt and word prep.)

Education Impact Goal : We currently have a partnership with The Vallet Foundation, with whom we are organizing technology / coding focused training sessions. We want to launch these sessions by this summer in Cotonou, and enable a maximum number of students to take part (we are still in the design process and haven't fixed the number). Our aim is for students to then be directly hired by IT and tech firms after course completion. Discussions with 3 IT firms are underway to precisely fix course content and which jobs openings these sessions would “fit” with, to ensure graduates' recruitment (ii).

Employment : We currently have 7,000 CVs on our platform and have found employment opportunities for 50 people, in consultancy, journalism and investment funds. Our aim is to increase the number of recruitments enabled by NYOTA, to reach 100 job placements per month by next year (iii).

Scholarships : We aim to create future training sessions and scholarships for tech training skills, to reduce the digital and tech literacy gap, by 2024. Our aim is to create at least 10 scholarships in partnership with tech focused universities in Benin and the Ivory Coast in 2024 (iiii.)

We strive to make a difference and encourage social mobility to do so. We strongly believe that it is through education that we can reduce inequalities. In Africa, in particular, the dynamics are very complex and vary from one part of the continent to another. International companies are recruiting local talent more than ever as they grow, and we have the opportunity to help families by providing education and exposure to the companies that already trust us. 

One of the key aspects of Nyota's innovation resides in the way that it matches candidates with job descriptions and offers - to give visibility to candidates. The main functionality offered by the platform is indeed the “matching” of CVs and job offers.

The technology implemented to meet this need is a combination of classical filtering computing methods based on conditions, and more recent and refined methods from the latest advances in artificial intelligence such as Natural Language Processing and Recommendation Systems.

Initially, the recruiter can use a set of filters to enter his or her selection criteria. This information, chosen from the filters, will have been entered beforehand by each of the candidates, on their profile (sector preference / motivation / trainings..etc.). This classic algorithm will then look for the candidate(s) who meet the conditions required.

To be able to perform a finer sorting, a Natural Language Processing model is used. We will use the FastText model, developed by Facebook. This model will be able to represent a word in the form of a vector of fixed size, making sure that this vector captures the meaning of the word in question as well as possible. This word embedding model will thus be used to produce a dense representation of both the CVs and the job offers of the same dimension, making them comparable. Thus, with this representation, we will be able to sort the profiles of candidates according to their distance to the job offer, using the cosine distance function which is very adapted for this kind of task.

Finally, the website uses a recommendation system to recommend job openings to job seekers based on their previous searches and browsing history. This is typically done using techniques such as collaborative filtering, content-based filtering, and matrix factorization.

Overall, the technology behind Nyota is designed to make the candidates search process as efficient and effective as possible by using advanced algorithms to match job seekers with suitable job openings, without disqualifying candidates on social background, university ranking or subjective criteria. The input used also resides in the information given by candidates on their profile (country preference, sector preference..etc.), making it easier to be found by the algorithm based on preferences.

7,500 people have decided to trust us to help them find a job in Africa, by creating a profile on our job board and sending us their CV, to gain visibility  and hear about recruitment opportunities. We hope to have more than 30 000 CVs / candidate profiles by next year on our website. (We aim to reach 10, 000 by June 2023).

We have currently enabled 50 people find a decent and stable job, mostly in the service industry sectors (journalism, IT, finance) through our job board and recruitment services. We aim to help hire 100 people per month by the end of 2023/ start of 2024.

In parallel we are currently working with 6 African companies (including ESP, I&P, Jeune Afrique) and have therefore serviced 6 Human Resources Teams to help them find the right "fit" and create further economic opportunities locally. On the client side, our goal is to reach 60 clients (HR teams) by December 2023. 

We will achieve this through our communication strategy based on the production of content on social networks (articles, testimonials and interviews) related to professional opportunities in Africa, as well as the organization of events with companies. Finally, we will use our network of academic partnerships, consisting of more than 20 institutions in Africa and Europe, to help more youth and women benefit from our solution.

Financial barriers could prevent us from reaching our goals. We are planning to use our profits to finance IT / coding trainings this summer, but without sufficient financial ressources, we will not be able to pay and hire IT teachers for the training sessions.

Technical barriers could also prevent us from fully developing our algorithm / and website. 

Other operational risks could pose an issue, if we don't manage to put in connection recruiters and candidates fast enough and spark a connexion.

We have partnered with the Fondation Vallet, which organizes artificial intelligence summer bootcamps. (Link here)

We are finding the right IT teachers and are planning to organize with them, for this summer, a coding/IT session for young students and women.

To find the right type of IT firms who would then hire our talents and graduates, we are taking part in the CyberOps Forum (and have partnered with their organization), to discuss in greater details hiring opportunities (after course completion) for students with the right IT skills. We are also co designing the trainings with the CyberOps Forum's participants; so that the taught skills matches the skill demand.

NYOTA solves recruitment issues with a subscription (for firms) to a CV-library and an algorithm matching candidates with recruiters/job offers. We noticed that the African continent is experiencing a severe brain drain on the one hand and that on the other, many people do not easily find jobs; despite the growing start-up and business landscape. 40% of the students we interviewed had never received information about professional opportunities in Africa and 45% of CEO interviewed affirmed that they were concerned by the availability of key skills on the continent.

We therefore decided to address this problem by creating a large CV library, for people interested in professional opportunities in Africa. Subscriptions to the CV library represent 80% of our revenues and headhunting services 20%. 

We charge our clients (consultancy firms, pan African groups, newspapers agencies, IOs, NGOs, investment funds) based on the number of CVs that they wish to have access to, according to recruitment needs and have worked with 6 clients so far. We equally use data-scraping and have created an algorithm to facilitate job offers and candidates’ profiles “matching”, which is then assessed with an interview.

Our path to profitability includes selling more services to recruiting firms, and reaching a hire number of candidates / students by multiplying our partnership with schools and universities. 

Our aim is for as much of our candidates to join the job market, to prove to our clients that they are talented and well equipped for the labour market.

As we grow, test the market and our solution, we plan to sell a subscription for financial companies' HR teams to our CV library. We're planning to sell different forms of subscription based on numerical needs (A small price for an access to 50 CVs, medium price for 100 CVs, higher price for 200 CVs...).

We also provide headhunting services. We plan for CV-library subscriptions to cover 80% of our revenues, and headhunting services 20%.

CV writing workshops, webinars and training sessions are designed to help our candidates stand out within the labour market, we do not charge / or get remunerated for these.