CEO of Junior Achievement Africa Simi Nwogugu wins Africa Education Medal

Simi Nwogugu of Nigeria, CEO of Junior Achievement Africa (https://JA-Africa.org/), was selected the winner of this year’s Africa Education Medal, Africa’s most prestigious education award, which was established last year by T4 Education and HP in conjunction with Microsoft.

The Africa Education Medal was established to honor those changemakers who are advancing African education. According to UNESCO data, Sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s highest rates of educational marginalization. Over one-fifth of children aged 6 to 11 are not in school, with girls being particularly disadvantaged. However, due to diligent international efforts, Africa made significant advances in increasing enrollment in the decades preceding the epidemic.

The Africa Education Medal aspires to inspire others to follow in their footsteps and make permanent change to African education by honouring the tales of individuals who fight every day to expand on these crucial advances.

Simi Nwogugu is the CEO of Junior Achievement Africa, which is part of the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Junior Achievement Africa Worldwide, one of the world’s leading youth-serving non-governmental organizations that educates young people for careers. She met Junior Achievement Africa for the first time while working at Goldman Sachs in New York City. She left her lucrative career at the age of 24 to bring Junior Achievement Africa to Nigeria, where it now serves over 100,000 young people annually, before moving on to lead Junior Achievement Africa’s activities across the continent.

The fact that 60% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population and 37% of its workers are under the age of 25 emphasizes the critical importance of Nwogugu’s work. Africa will be home to 25% of the world’s youth population by 2025. Her organization empowers young people to grow their entrepreneurial ideas, hone their work readiness skills, manage their earnings, and secure better lives for themselves, their families, and their communities by providing hands-on, blended learning in financial literacy, work readiness, and entrepreneurship.

Junior Achievement Africa

Nwogugu has led Junior Achievement Africa’s efforts in various capacities for the past 25 years, as the organization embarked on a mission to help young people generate and effectively manage wealth, create jobs for their communities, and apply entrepreneurial thinking to the workplace and skills that will secure their financial future. Her passion for strategy and creativity has resulted in the creation of numerous meaningful initiatives that ensure young Africans have the necessary skills and mindset to thrive.

She is a strong supporter of girls’ education, and one of her most notable programs is the Leadership, Empowerment, Achievement, and Development (LEAD) Camp for Girls, which has inspired and empowered over 1,200 young girls to become high-achieving female leaders in society. Another initiative she has championed is the Venture in Management Program (ViMP), which aims to empower young people in the various aspects of company management, such as making critical business decisions and building abilities for General Management and social responsibility. Graduates of the school have gone on to build some of Nigeria’s most successful enterprises and to run some of the continent’s most influential non-profit organizations.

She also created internet and after-school youth programs that allowed her group to reach disadvantaged areas in Nigeria’s north, even during the Boko Haram crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prior to becoming CEO of Junior Achievement Africa in 2020, she managed JA Nigeria, which had an influence on the lives of over one million Nigerians in 5,000 schools. Iyin Aboyeji, the founder of two unicorns, Andela and Flutterwave, is one of many Junior Achievement Africa alumni who have gone on to become job creators and social entrepreneurs. She says, “JA gave me my first taste of entrepreneurship when I participated in the Company Program in secondary school.” Simi deserves credit for bringing this program to Nigeria.”

Nwogugu also serves as President of the Harvard Business School Alumni Association of Nigeria (HBSAN) and has received numerous awards from the school, including the Bert King Award for Social Impact presented by the Harvard Business School African-American Alumni Association. She is presently a fellow with the Aspen Institute’s Africa Leadership Initiative for West Africa (ALIWA), where she is working to empower and equip 10 million African females to establish thriving communities by 2050.