Meet Onome, 2017 TEF ALUMNI. Seed Capital in Education/Training Sector
The Niger Delta region of Nigeria is endowed with multitudinous human and material resources. Despite the Niger Delta region’s magnanimous contributions to Nigeria’s wealth, the people remain unemployed, impoverished, underdeveloped, and blighted by environmental and health hazards. However, due to gross mismanagement, wasteful spending, kleptomania, and adverse policies of various governments of Nigeria, these resources have neither been optimally utilized nor adequately channelled to profitable investments to maximize economic benefits to the communities. As a result, the region has been bedevilled with unemployment and poverty.
Onome Matilda Odogene, a computer engineer with ten years of experience in the oil and gas sector, was interested in entrepreneurship. Her goal was to get youths in the Niger Delta region employed in sectors of the economy apart from oil and make African chefs top in the global culinary ranking.
“I want to change the narrative that we can get the youths gainfully employed in other sectors of the economy beside oil. I want African chefs to be top in the global culinary rank by equipping the chefs with professional skills, knowledge, and competence needed to be a successful chef or food business owners/start- up.”
Styda is set to be a global culinary business, that is set to revolutionize the food/foodservices industry in Nigeria. Styda Culinary is an academy that provides affordable, convenient and quality culinary training to chefs, would-be chefs, food business owners/startups, food enthusiast etc to interested clients within Warri and environs.
“The seed capital, business management training and priceless networks that I have gotten through the TEF platform has made all the difference in my business and changed my life entirely.”
Today, she has trained over 300 chefs and revamped over 30 foodservice businesses. She generated $15,350 minimum direct annual revenue, employed about six staff directly, and created jobs for hundreds of people. She has impacted people within the Niger Delta region by creating countless employment opportunities.
