"My reward is not in heaven. Every three months, I see my reward. It's in the young people who are so transformed they can't keep quiet"

Naomi Lucas You will find Naomi straddling the intersection between Media, Youth and Technology. She has managed, consulted for or worked with a long list of brands driving impact across the globe. As the founder of Graduatepro and International Youth Development Centre, she's committed to increasing access to economic opportunities for young people within and outside the continent. 

“I run a venture studio focused on bridging the gap between the demand for work-ready talent and the supply of decent, meaningful jobs. I have been in the youth space for a bit. And we have done some pretty cool things. We set up the venture studio because of the insights we gleaned from the work we initially did. Africa's unemployment situation is bad. AFDB says that by 2025, we will have almost a quarter of a billion young Africans disenfranchised on the continent. Although the challenges are great, the opportunities are greater.

So, we set up a venture studio focused on creating products, solutions, interventions, and programs targeted at young Africans wherever they may be. And then ensuring they have the tools, skills, and resources they need to get and stay ahead.

I sincerely believe that unemployment is ungodly. I sincerely believe that it is against the will of God for people who are capable, able, skilled, and have the capacity to waste away. It's unacceptable. And it's not something I can live with - it exists and the world is just going on like all is well."- Naomi Lucas

How did you start? Was there something that spurred you into creating this solution?

I used to work with a youth marketing firm and was assigned a nationwide project for a multinational. My mandate was to reach one million young people annually, spread across 32 states in about 4,500 schools nationwide.

This was a very complex project because it was a point-of-market entry program. I was supposed to ensure that this specific target audience came in contact with a particular product for this multinational, at the cusp of the point when they will need that particular product. So, they will emotionally connect with this specific brand when they eventually need the product. 

So, that was my job - one million young people every year spread across the country. For me to do this at every point in time, I would need between 80 and 120 people to work with me. And it's a lot of people to recruit within a short time. I had a very short time to roll out. So, I recruited some key people and then sent them across the country. They were Supervisors, but I sent them across the country to recruit in the locations where I knew we would need people. 

The way it worked in my head at the time was that I would go to those locations with jobs in my bag and see a cluster of young people who had already been shortlisted and were qualified for the role. That was what I thought. But disappointment turned into alarm, despair, anger, sadness, and fear when I was going around the country and seeing the quality of young people who were showing up for the jobs that I had.

I would sit in a hotel in Warri or Enugu, and of the 50 people shortlisted for the specific role or jobs I had for that location, there was nobody I could pick. By the time I was done conversing with those people in about three to four locations, I knew deep down that I needed to do something. But I had a full-time job. It was a crazy one. I was really busy. I traveled so much, cabin crew members called me sis; you know, we knew ourselves so much because of how much I traveled. But I knew that I needed to do something. I just wasn't sure what. 

I decided to create a blog. I wanted to discuss what made me not select these people when I went to these locations and then tell them how they could overcome the challenges I had seen. That was essentially how all of this started.

In my mind, when I return from work and I’m about to sleep, I'll spend an hour or two responding to the comments or questions that anybody has. And then the world would be a better place. It wasn't long before I became very overwhelmed. The questions kept pouring in from left, right and center. I would stay up late into the night responding to young people I didn't know, probably never met from all parts of the country about so many things. And I just thought, “I can't do this.” Like, this is too much. I didn't plan for this. It was just really overwhelming. 

So, I began to think about what I could do. Surely, there must be a way to reach these people where they are with this information without me having to regurgitate the same or similar things to different young people about the same or similar things.

I kept asking questions, and that's how we ended up here today. The direct product created due to my asking is an audio production called “I'm A Graduate, Now What?” I wrote the scripts and had them dramatized and narrated by 56 Nigerian influencers and celebrities. Then, I distributed it via over a dozen streaming platforms—Apple Music, Deezer, Spotify, just name it. Again, what I was trying to do was reach young people. And it was a very huge experiment.

I thought to myself that if we leverage mobile penetration, which was increasing; if we leverage young people's attraction to the creative industries and things that are creative; if we're able to put it in a format that is easy for them to consume and in places where they already frequent, maybe we might be able to make a difference. And I can tell you that with very little marketing, which was very organic - mostly driven by the celebrities themselves, the telcos we worked with, and the streaming platforms - “I'm A Graduate, Now What?” has sold almost a million copies.

What was your key motivation? As you stated, Is it your passion for young people or your work?

I’ll go spiritual. I sincerely believe that unemployment is ungodly. I sincerely believe that it is against the will of God for people who are capable, able, skilled, and have the capacity to waste away. It's unacceptable. And it's not something I can live with - it exists and the world is just going on like all is well. The youth are the future of the continent. And the future is not prepared, not skilled, and then the future is being disenfranchised. It should be a global emergency!

The plan was not to do something new and first of its kind. I was just a passionate young woman who wanted young people to have help. 

What are the challenges you have faced while setting out, and how have you been overcoming them? 

I'll talk about “I'm A Graduate, Now What?” and then The Employment Bootcamp.

With “I'm A Graduate, Now What?” I dealt with a lot of cynicism. Because what I was presenting was something that hadn't been done before.

The plan was not to do something new and first of its kind. It wasn't the plan. I was just a passionate young woman who wanted young people to have help. And then, I went online and typed in Africa's biggest book project. What I was looking for was some type of expo. Like somebody who has done something that I could learn from. I didn't have any framework or any benchmark for what I wanted to do. But I could see in my head what I was trying to do. And then I realized that there was nothing like that.

So, I designed it. I was very embedded in the youth ecosystem at that point as a result of my job and the things that I was doing. The first few people that I spoke to were so cynical that I became very confused. “Do I know what I'm doing?” 

These are well-established people who know about the youth space and the distribution system. So, the response that I got troubled me. “Why would you say something won't work if you haven't done it before? I'm talking about something that hasn't been done before. And all I hear is that it won't work. How did they know it wouldn't work? So, to be honest, I set out to do “I'm A Graduate, Now What?” because of rebellion. I preferred to do it and fail but I was not going to leave it alone because somebody said it is not something that can succeed.

There was a lot of cynicism. And, of course, I couldn't get funding because of the cynicism. I funded the production of “I'm A Graduate, Now What?” end to end, and it cost over 10 million naira to do that. If I didn't have that money, it would never have happened because nobody was willing to give it to me. Nobody thought that it was worth doing, and I couldn't find funding for it. 

For The Employment Bootcamp, I used to be the Senior Vice President for Marketing and Growth for a tech firm. After I left, I sat back with everything that I'd been trying to do in the youth space for a while and decided that it was going to be my life's work. I decided that patience was required to solve the problems I was trying to solve. I also needed to be patient to see the outcomes I wanted. 

When I decided that it was going to be my life's work, I made a very earnest and sincere prayer to God to send me missionaries. I'm not afraid to be spiritual because it guides a lot of the work that I do. I'm solving a spiritual problem. I asked God to send me missionaries. And I don't mean missionaries holding the Bible and talking to people about Jesus. I mean the constitution of people who are going to work with me. 

Missionaries don't quit. They don't take no for an answer. They are mission-minded. They will see the end of the matter from the beginning; and come rain, come shine, come flood, come tsunami, come landslide, missionaries are there with you. And I knew that it was such a lonely thing to do because I'd done it before. It was so lonely that it impacted my health. I had to recover from the work that I was doing, so I asked for missionaries.

There's an acute people problem for anybody trying to make an impact, especially on the African continent. You would usually be bootstrapped, especially when trying something new, because you don't have the financial bandwidth or the deep pockets required to pay what Flutterwave or Nestle is paying. Even the grants may not come your way because they've already designed their outcomes. And you are trying a new approach that may differ from the outcomes they’re trying to actualize. So, you're unable to get the kind of funding you're looking for.

Right now, I'm bootstrapping. It's very hard and challenging, but like I said, it's my life's work. 

So, people, cynicism, and funding. Those three things have been key challenges for me. 

I'm working with the type of people who will not allow me to quit. They've carried the matter on their heads, and it inspires me to make it work when I wake up every day. If these people are committed like this, quitting is not an option for me. We will make it work.

What inspires the work that you do? 

It is two-fold. The first will be the people who work with me. For someone at my level, it's very easy for me to reenter the workforce if I want. If it gets hard, I can just make a phone call and say, “I'm looking to cover so-and-so-regions, and I'm looking to offer so-and-so services. I know that you're building so-and-so products. Yeah. Can we talk?” And I'll just have coffee, and suddenly, I'm the Global President of something. It's very easy to do that. But I'm working with a type of people that will not allow me to quit. And I don't mean because I'm trying to quit. I mean, they've carried the matter on their heads. And it inspires me when I wake up every day to make it work. If these people are committed like this, quitting is not an option for me. We will make it work.

The second thing is the testimonials. With The Employment Bootcamp, we have a lot of testimonies (follow @amazingafricansspotlight on Instagram to see the testimonials)

We have a lot of young people who come for The Employment Bootcamp confused, scattered, frustrated, anxious, browbeaten, tired, depressed, name it. And it takes so much to get them from point A to point B. We designed a system that does not allow them to quit because they want to quit by level one or level two. We have live review sessions, and they are crying. They will tell you that the most emotionally stressed they've ever been is being in the bootcamp, so they want to quit. They sometimes won’t show up for some of the sessions.

So, we have someone who calls and encourages them to ensure they don't quit. It’s like dragging, supporting, and pushing them to keep going because it’s hard. 

And then, when you see these young people on the other side, they become so confident, have so much clarity, and decide to chart better career paths. 

It's so beautiful to see. My reward is not in heaven. Every three months,  I see my reward. It's in the young people who are so transformed they can't keep quiet.

For the incoming cohorts of The Employment Bootcamp, word of mouth generates over 50 percent of the leads. The bootcampers are our marketing, and we're not even actively telling them to market it. They just can't keep quiet. So, yes, it’s the stories of transformation that come to me. And every time they come, I cry a lot. I watch their impact statements, and I'm emotional.

My other inspiration is the people who work with me. They are so gangster. If unemployment were a person, they'd be in the ring and not give up the fight.

The intention is that every young African out there who is dealing with all of the systemic inefficiencies that prevent them from thriving should know that they are not alone. We are actively thinking about them and working to resolve those pain points, and we will not give up. 

What's the overall or the long-term vision for this project? And, in turn, what's your vision for Africa? 

For the long term, it’s what we call our North Star. As a venture studio, our North Star is essentially developing products and solutions that help young Africans get and stay ahead.

Right now, we are actively reaching young Africans in over 23 countries. We are signing on Partnership Leads, and we have partners currently in eight countries and counting. We have what we call In-country Partners, and we have over 20 of those as we speak. And there are so many more that are joining the fold. 

The intention is that every young African out there who is dealing with all of the systemic inefficiencies that prevent them from thriving should know that they are not alone. We are actively thinking about them and working to resolve those pain points, and we will not give up. That's a long-term vision.

From a business perspective, we've designed The Employment Bootcamp to be an exit-point program for all post-secondary institutions where we have young Africans. It sounds like a very grand thing, but it's already materializing. And then ultimately, every young African above 18, we want them to take this program.

For Africa, I believe that we cannot divorce the current narrative from the reality of the continent, how it's been designed, and the systemic inefficiencies that exist. We can do whatever we can right now, but I doubt very strongly that we will be able to make any inroads until we fix the economic inefficiencies that exist. This is the reason why we are prioritizing decent jobs.

A broke young person is easily manipulated. A broke young person would struggle with agency. A broke young person can be influenced and is impressionable. If we can engineer social mobility so that there's some decency and dignity to the life and the lived experiences of young Africans, they will change the narrative that currently exists as far as the continent is concerned. That's my sincere belief.

If we can engineer social mobility so that there's some decency and dignity to the lives and lived experiences of young Africans, they will change the narrative that currently exists as far as the continent is concerned.

What key collaborations have been beneficial to you, and what opportunities are you keen on securing at the moment? 

We've had a couple of universities reach out to us to ask that their graduates participate in The Employment Bootcamp. We've decided that we want to be an exit-point program, like I said, for tertiary institutions. So, we're actively reaching out to tertiary institutions, starting with private universities, because the layers of complexity in terms of conversations are manageable.

So, we're having conversations with these universities from Ghana to Kenya to Rwanda, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. We're very keen on collaborating with universities, their career directorates, and career service centers to incorporate this program into their exit-point strategy for their graduates. This is key because it improves and dramatically increases the prospects of the people who leave in terms of securing jobs and creating opportunities for themselves and for those around them. 

The second is Alumni Associations of various tertiary institutions. We've found that they either have a Telegram group, WhatsApp group, or some type of cluster or place where they meet. Those groups are very powerful because they are closer to the young people we are trying to reach. They most likely have a database of members who are struggling to find jobs or struggling economically. So, even though the way Alumni Associations are configured, they can rarely ever afford to pay on behalf of their members; we're just particular about getting the word out that there is a solution for chronic unemployment. 

We've designed the solution. It's a fixable problem, and our promise is they can be gainfully employed in as little as 12 weeks. And we mean that very sincerely. The language of instruction is English. We can’t execute in other languages yet.

The opportunities I am looking to secure are two-fold. We need funding. For the scale of work we’re already doing, we’re performing magic practically being bootstrapped. We’re starting our pre-seed round. So, we’re actively seeking funding if there are investors out there looking to invest in impact-driven work. We’re a for-profit venture studio, not an NGO. We have a sustainability plan and a business model. But for impact-driven investors who want to drive the outcome we have spoken about, we will be more than happy to speak with them.

Is the bootcamp institution or group-based so that the members access the sessions for free or at a discounted rate?

We have two approaches - the direct-to-consumer approach and the business-to-business approach. For post-secondary institutions, the idea is for the institutions to pay on behalf of their young people but with significant discounts. There are also over 23 million young people in Nigeria alone. So, we’re very particular about our direct-consumer route, where anybody who falls within the target audience can apply, and once they are selected, they can pay for the program.

Have you received any awards or recognition yet?

Not yet. We are less than two years in.

Get out of the building. Clarity comes on the road.

How would you advise someone with a vision in the ideation stage but is already overwhelmed by the challenges and risks it would require?

I have two. One is to get out of the building. Clarity comes on the road. Sometimes, starting is difficult because you are still thinking about it. It is like when you want to swim, but you are agonizing that the water is cold because of how it will feel on your body, and then you jump in and realize that you are still alive. It was not so bad. So, get out of the building.

The second thing I will say is that the difference between failure and success is tied to your ability to keep going after it gets hard. It will get hard at some point, and you will want to quit. But your outcomes are guaranteed if you can keep going.

The difference between failure and success is tied to your ability to keep going after it gets hard. It will get hard at some point, and you’ll want to quit. But your outcomes are guaranteed if you can keep going after it gets hard.

Catch snippets of Naomi Lucas' story and more on our Instagram page - @amazingafricansspotlight and the audio interview on Spotify - Amazing Africans Spotlight.