Chris Kwekowe is Tackling Unemployment and Talent Management with Slatecube
Chris Kwekowe is not your regular 24 year old!
At 19, this Tony Elumelu Entrepreneur alongside his brother founded Microbold, a company focusedon providing business solutions for SMEs and large scale enterprises, offering an extensively innovative approach towards providing technology solutions for business, education, family and even technology enthusiast.
However, Microbold is not what rings a bell when you mention his name. He is known to be the young man who has rejected jobs from global firms like Microsoft in a bid to fulfill his dream of adding value to Africa directly. In 2014, Chris set out tackle talent management, skills gap and unemployment and this made him found Slate cube. Through Slatecube, Students and fresh graduates sign on to the platform where they learn and acquire industry-relevant skills, after which they get experience by virtually interning at reputable ICT firms, putting their learned skills to use. Their overall experience at Slatecube gives them a chance of getting employed by some international high profile companies.
According to reports, the platform has an 80 percent employment rate for its users. And have saved companies over $100,000 in hiring skilled, ready to work employees.
Slatecube also works with schools and organisations to create, host, and implement virtual learning and organisational training programs. As well as provide employable talents. So far, the platform has over 157 industry related topics ranging from corporate finance to anger management, is in partnership with 23 schools and organisation, and has provided over 1500 virtual internship programmes. Slatecube also has quite the amount of traffic with over 3,000 visitors each month.
In 2015, Chris was selected out of 20,000 applications for the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme, this meant he got his first funding and seed capital which he says has paved the way for several more funding including studying on Global Entrepreneurship at the MIT. With the network and the business idea validation that came with his selection on the TEF programme as his biggest take away, Chris is set to tap more by providing technical expertise to Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurs in need of skills in Technology, Design and Marketing.
As a business person, Chris embraces the philosophy of Africapitalism as he believes that African’s are the key to solving the problems of Africa and Slatecube becomes more prosperous by helping others. Now in the year of its full term launch, Chris and his 10 man team of 20 year olds and over 100 volunteers across the world are set to fully serve and put an end to the challenge of unemployment. team Kwekowe spends up to four months a year courting investors and potential employers for the platform in the U.S. He also says he’s negotiating with several household names—including Google and Microsoft—about working with Slatecube. In 2017, the company plans to open offices in Kenya, Ghana and South Africa, and it is in talks with a Nigerian venture capital firm about what Kwekowe describes as “a significant investment.”
As Slatecube rides on the path to success Chris is optimistic that success in Lagos means he can take this solution to other parts of Africa “If you can do business in Lagos, you can do business anywhere in the world,” he says. “The struggle is real here.”
