60 Nigerian, Ghanian youths to benefit from TRACE troops initiatives yearly

As part of its commitment towards empowering young people across the African continent, TRACE, an entertainment channel dedicated to Nigerian and Ghanaian music, has disclosed that 60 young West Africans from Nigeria and Ghana will benefit from its TRACE Troops, a multi-directional initiative with focus on education, entertainment and empowerment.

Disclosing this in Lagos, the Co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, TRACE, Oliver Laouchez, described the initiative as a corporate social responsibility aimed at educating and empowering 60 youth from Nigeria and Ghana yearly in their journey to become industry leaders.

He explained that the initiative would have a group of 15 youths between the ages of 16 and 28, who are passionate about Afro-urban culture and change across Nigeria and Ghana, hired for a three months period in paid internships.

“The focus is to give the youths a chance to share their perspectives on a wide range of issues affecting their generation while they have some fun. They will be empowered with the resources and guidelines on social media and entertainment, while they produce a project of their own choice,” Laouchez said.

He explained that in addition to having an experience to add to their curriculum vitae, the youths would be recognised as Trace Ambassadors.

“The first set of 15 youths have been selected and would begin their internship from July 22 to October 21, 2021, with special offerings ranging from branded merchandise, stipends, event tickets and promotions,” he stated.

Also announcing the launch of the TRACE Academia, the Managing Director, TRACE Anglophone West Africa, Sam Onyemelukwe, said that it was a free vocational training app for e-learning, which is focused on addressing massive youth unemployment on the continent.

“TRACE Academia will disrupt the traditional ‘boring’ e-learning, as it seeks to impact 25 million young people by year 2025.”

According to Onyemelukwe, the three priorities for the courses are entrepreneurship, jobs and soft skills.

“The learners are people who need to be trained for jobs of today and tomorrow; youths who need to gain skills that lead to entrepreneurship and employability, as well as corporate employees that need to be skilled, re-skilled and up-skilled.”

According to him, the free learning app is available to every youth without any academic qualifications barrier. It aims to end unemployment in Africa.