Internapp Introduction: Africa's first Time-Bound Staffing Application

As the novel Covid19 rages on deconstructing business systems and structures in its wake, companies and organizations have taken to their shelters administering pay cuts and orchestrating massive retrenchment in order to meet up demands of current reality.

The African Development Bank has put the unemployment rate in Africa at nearly 60%. Nigeria’s unemployed population stands at over 23 million which is more than the population of Sierra Leone, United Arab Emirates, Equatorial Guinea and Uruguay combined. Now with a global recession looming, these numbers will increase.

In the coming months, the UNDP has said nearly half of all jobs in Africa will be lost which will lead to a loss in income expected to exceed $220 billion. In South Africa for instance, standard bank of South Africa has already laid off 1200 workers and closed 91 branches in the country.

Prior to global health pandemic, securing work experience placement as a student in Nigeria was daunting. For me it was worse! I had to think of my ideal work place: employee-friendly; close to place of residence; timely disbursement of allowances and where my field of tudy was ligned with the company’s practice.

However, I encountered a major problem — one that left me bewildered. Almost all the front desk officers I had met confessed to me that I needed to have a connection or an influencer to boost the chances of my application to be considered. Some were kind enough to show me cartons that contained stack of torn papers which were internship letters and resume of people that did not have connections.

The World Economic Forum’s Human Capital Index shows that Africa’s working-age population (predominantly between the age 15–64 years) will increase by two-thirds in 2030- from 370 million adults in 2010 to over 600 million in 2030. However, a significant portion of this age group is already unemployed or underemployed mostly due to inadequate education and skills levels.

One of the recommendations from World Economic Forum research on Realizing Human Potential in the Fourth Industrial is early exposure to the workplace and career guidance. This is what Internapp stands for.

Intern-app coined from “Internship” and “Applications”, presents a simple yet fastest way to launch a career you have always desired. Best part? You don’t need to have a connection! The time-bound staffing platform aims to match interested and skilled African talents with leading global companies and organizations through a temporary work experience program ranging from 3 to 12 months.

Up to 10 company brands will be sampled based on your data input and determined by two key facets — field of interest/course of study and personal interest such as painting, writing, sculpting, et al. A click on submit button will see that the application created is distributed to your selected featured companies at the same time. Students will be able to work remotely or in-person and will be paid $100 or more in monthly stipends while graduates or young professionals will be paid $300 or more.

To be sure stipends are disbursed as at when due, a payment wallet will be embedded in the cross-platform app which links user profiles to their bank accounts.

We partner with leading companies and organizations worldwide to codesign a workplace learning experience for students and graduates or young professionals to take a chance on themselves, utilizing available career mapping tools to make informed decisions about a working life that is more fulfilling to them.

This technical solution design will help achieve sustainable development goal 8 of UNDP which is full and productive employment, and decent work for all men and women.

We envision a world where academia has intertwining relationship with industry.