African youths to deliberate on entrepreneurship at AYLES 2018

Guardian Newspapers Ltd, in collaboration with The Orator Project Africa and National Youth Council of Nigeria, will hold the third edition of the Africa Youth Leadership & Economic Summit (AYELS), May 3-5, 2018, at Eko Hotels & Suite Grand Ball Hall, Lagos, Nigeria.

The conference with the theme: ‘Youth Entrepreneurship: Workplace Transformation & Career Advancement’, will be a gathering of the brightest young leaders from around Africa, and empowering them to make lasting connections to create positive changes in their communities.

AYLES is a yearly summit where the most valuable young talents from Africa come together to debate, formulate and share innovative solutions for the pressing issues Africa faces, which include unemployment, insecurity, and political leadership.

After each summit, the delegates with unique business ideas and plans are empowered to work on their own initiatives or collaborate with others to create opportunities that will be of benefit to their communities.

The forthcoming summit is designed to be an African forum on youth employment, leadership, and economic development.

AYLES is designed to be a defining moment in the history of the Nigerian and African young people; it is a seminar as well as a boot-camp event that will launch a decade-long global campaign for youth employment and leadership development.
The goal of the summit is to create productive and sustainable livelihoods for over 20 million young adults, especially young graduates and start-ups facing poverty by sheer lack of leadership direction in creating the enabling environment to support creative ideas, by the year 2023.

AYLES will be a working summit where a large contingent of youths and representatives from diverse sectors of the society will share innovative ideas, practices, and strategies for promoting youth employment.

All delegates will join The Orator Project network, a worldwide network of individuals and institutions that will take action and promote youth employment in the continent.

After the summit, selected members of The Orator Project will convene at regional, national, and local meetings to identify barriers, suggest promising strategies, share innovations and develop their own action plans to help fulfill the goals of the summit.

The AYELS conference will focus on three key things: Youth Entrepreneurship, Workplace Transformation and Career Advancement
There will also be high-powered presentations at breakout sessions from an experiential point of view to position participants for great business and career breakthroughs.

This three-day event will have highly interactive sessions laced with performances from top African entrepreneurs, artistes, games, exhibitions, excursion trips for delegates coming from other African countries, and group presentations from schools etc.
It will be an unforgettable experience!

Why an Africa Youth Leadership & Economic Summit?
One of the major causes of poverty is the insufficient opportunity for people to earn a living – the demand for employment exceeds the ability to supply.
Three billion people live on less than $2 per day as poverty continues to grow. In many countries, especially in the developing world, half of these people are under the age of 25.

Presently, youth population has been put at 1.4 billion. (as at August 2017). The world population will reach 9.8 billion in 2050, an increase of about 31 percent from an estimated 7.5 billion now, according to projections included in the 2017 World Population Data Sheet from the Population Reference Bureau (PRB).

Without concerted and targeted actions, we can expect that the current barriers to youth employment and development will continue to exist.

In view of the above, we as an organization have taken the step to begin to educate our youths and to create opportunities for them by partnering with governments at all levels and other private entities.

We have strategic collaborations with the Africa Youth Chamber of Commerce & Investment, London Academy Business School, Guardian Newspaper Limited, Primera Finance Group, Phamatex Industries, Cuddly Kids school, Hey Day school, Integral OD Ltd Uk, Center for Management Development, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Dynatech Group, state and local governments to enable us carry out this onerous task.

You can register to attend the Summit by visiting our website: www.oratorproject.com or at the venue at Eko Hotels and Suites, Lagos, from the 3rd to the 5th of May, 2018. The event kicks off at 9 am daily and ends at 4 pm and will be rounded up with a gala and award ceremony on Saturday, 5th May from 5 pm.