Olajide Ojeniyi gets selected for the World Bank Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) Youth Advisory Group (YAG)
Olajide comes with a tremendous passion for research and innovation. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Lagos State University. He has attended extensive leadership and management courses, ranging from the British Council, Pan-African University, Alibaba Business School, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, The Black Policy Institute UK, GE Garage, Daystar Leadership Academy, and the Centre for Enterprise Development and Action Research. To gain hands-on experience in business, he has been collaborating with likeminded individuals to take on socio-economic problems around Africa. As a participant at the GIC United Nations Office for Project Services, 2020. Olajide was one of a select crop of young people invited to participate in a Youth Enterprise survey programme organised by the World Bank in the years 2013, 2014, 2016, and 2019. He recently won the Business Excellence Award for 2019, organised by the World Confederation of Businesses, USA. Olajide was also selected as a national nominee by the World Summit Awards under the aegis of the United Nations.
The World Bank Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) recently selected him and a few other youths across the globe to join the Youth Advisory Group. Quoting the remarks of Apoorva Reddy Neelapu, the Technical Specialist, who says, “To tackle youth unemployment, young people must have a greater say in the policies that directly affect them, Recognising the importance of youth voice, the World Bank S4YE Youth Advisory Group (YAG) ensures that all our work, research, knowledge products, and strategic decisions incorporate feedback from youth. In the past years, the S4YE YAG members have been invited to several high-profile World Bank events and have also contributed to flagship reports of the World Bank. We are thrilled to have Olajide onboard.”
Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) is a global programme that brings together donors, governments, foundations, private sector companies, NGOs, and youth to support catalytic programmes to increase the number of young people engaged in productive work. The S4YE Secretariat is housed in the Jobs Group of the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice at the World Bank. S4YE acts as a strategic gateway to connect youth employment stakeholders with over 150 youth employment operations of the World Bank. S4YE partners include the World Bank, Accenture, The Rockefeller Foundation, Mastercard Foundation, Microsoft, Plan International, the International Youth Foundation (IYF), Youth Business International (YBI), RAND Corporation, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the governments of Norway and Germany, the UN Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, and multiple private companies (over 35 large corporations). Other bilateral partners that support S4YE through the Jobs MDTF include UK Aid, SIDA, and Austria.
This initiative is fueled by the need to address a growing challenge: in the next 10 years, more than 1 billion young people will enter the job market. This means that 5 million jobs are needed per month to accommodate this influx and maintain current employment levels in the developing world. The S4YE coalition has an explicit commitment to work over a period of at least fifteen years to achieve its objectives. This timeline is proportionate to the scale of the challenge to understand and address the constraints on employment faced by young people.
