 Entrepreneurship and Education. In these interesting and challenging times, Nigeria and ultimately Africa needs more creative entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship has been misconstrued and subconsciously reduced to opening shops and selling commodities. Trading is simply a subset of entrepreneurship. How are we looking at the problem with a creative mentality? Entrepreneurship is a mindset and a certain way of thinking. Entrepreneurs look at problems and spot opportunities while creatively deploying developing solutions to addressing these problems. How are we really building and grooming a kind of young entrepreneurs? Do we have workable framework appropriately institutionalized and woven into the fabrics of our educational system? There are several opportunities hidden as problems within our nation that real entrepreneurship can solve. Our educational curriculum needs to be revisited if not entirely overhauled. We need to start offering young people a new way of thinking, a new perspective to looking at problems and new platforms of expression. It is the quality of our thinking at early stage levels that will create new beliefs, drive new actions, and ultimately create new results for us. Education is a massive tool to drive real entrepreneurship. The problem here is that our educational sector is largely underfunded and underserviced. How can we create a new generation of forward thinking entrepreneurs when we are not paying close attention to what young folks are learning? Young people are doing the best they can with what they currently know. If they knew better, maybe they would act better. A strength of our nation lies in the ability to collectively develop more value creators. We've got to raise the bar in creating value. There are lots of problems to solve. How are we intentionally building and nurturing a pipeline of young entrepreneurs who will provide solutions to these problems? Guys, when you were in school, what was entrepreneurship like? Did you have a course fully dedicated for entrepreneurship? No, and I graduated university in 2014. Primary school, secondary school, up onto university. There was no particular course on entrepreneurship. I went to a private school. It's not like I went to public school. I went to private school and there was nothing like that. I started my first business after NYSE in 2015. Funny enough, we were taught entrepreneurship in NYSE camp. What did you just talk about, making and nurturing? Yes, I know. They taught us the basic, very basic of entrepreneurship, which I'm saying that's even the closest. That should make you say, if that's what Nigerians or most people are calling entrepreneurship, if that's their first meeting point for entrepreneurship, there's a huge problem in Nigeria. I started my first business in 2015. After NYSE, and I was just going to do regular because I saw a problem in the market. I was going to go out to get a job and I didn't have official years. Then I went online. We had the two biggest e-commerce platform then that just started, but it was expensive. I said, no, I'm not going to get there. I'll go to Yaba, do bend down select. Then I was like, if I'll do that one, I'll be shy if people should see me. Why is there no platform for people to easily buy used fashion material? Why is there no website? Then that was where I started from because I saw the problem. I was faced with that problem. Then I started like, I want to be selling Trift Online. I'll just build a simple website to sell Trift Online. Then I had someone work with me and he was like, that's a good business, but you can't think global with this business. You can't think bigger with this. I don't think bigger was bigger, but let's just sell and make the money, put the money back and this thing like, that was what I knew about entrepreneurship and things like that. And he told me, no, if we have a website, that means we can reach people in most states across Nigeria. Even if we want to target Africa, we can reach more people to patronize you. That will open up market, that will open. And then we did that. And then it was mad, like the returns, the way and people interacted with the products, with the website. And then from there getting investors to come bringing the money into the business and then growing from there. And then that just changes your mind. Entrepreneurship, what we've been taught in this part of the world that entrepreneurship is, which is just buy and sell this thing. Anybody can do that. That's beyond that. It's about the mind and how you approach the problem. First, recognizing the problem. Second, knowing there's a market for the problem. Then knowing how to set that market and bring it out of the water. It's a whole lot. I'm very, very passionate about entrepreneurship and technology. Like those are my two passions because we've been watered down in this part of the world to be thinking that entrepreneurship is just about buying and selling. We've been watered down. Elijah, what can you say about, I want you to speak to something really very important. So our leaders of access to, you know, when you got out of school, get out of school, go create jobs or go do stuff. Do we have the sustainable or enabling environment to really do that? What can you say about that? Firstly, let me comment. I think it should be Oba Sanjo during his lead administration. He introduced this concept of entrepreneurship. I was tempted to ask, what school did you attend? Because I knew a long time ago, a long time ago, there was nothing like that. But I think during the time of Oba Sanjo, they introduced entrepreneurship studies in Nigeria University. But there is a problem. Now, here's the problem. The problem is the people teaching you these things, they're safe. They don't even understand it. What we learned in school about entrepreneurship is different from what entrepreneurship is reality. So it took me up on to the time I got into NYC and did some managerial courses, studying from schools from abroad, virtually all. The ones we learned in business school, I learned entrepreneurship is beyond finance, innovation, problems of it. Now, the enabling environment, well, that's where policy comes into play here. The government has to be intentional in bringing out policies not on their own. Call people to the table. There should be a round table discussion on the youth, stakeholders. How can we support youth, especially those that are innovatively driven in their approach to solving every day, every day problems, just like what you said. So how can governments bring up about policies? How can they enact policies that will support them? So the environment, like you said, well, I would say Nigerian youths don't wait for themselves despite the challenges, not enough support from government institutions and sometimes policies that stifle their activities. But on their own, they are doing very well. But if the government can be involved in and intentional, like when it comes to youth development, we only hear youth and sports, I think the government should even split that in ministry. Sports should be different from youth. Even the sport. Everybody must not be in sports. Even the sport, how are they really enabling the sport? Even the sport, the only part of our government is really interested in is agriculture. As long as you want to push cows. That's the only way they are interested in it. Even in sports, they are not interested. What are you saying about this conversation, you know, letting your thoughts. Okay, well, in my opinion, I think it's not until recently, we understood what entrepreneurship is all about. Before the now used to be set up a store, do it short term, get the money and move on. But now entrepreneurship is long term. People are thinking global. And I think the Nigerian youth, they've done well, very well for themselves. You see, you set up something instead of a system that is sustainable enough to transcend time, to transcend five years, six years, three years range. You set up a system that you know you are meeting the demand, you are meeting a certain market, you are answering the questions with certain markets, you are delivering the services to certain markets and you are going to think long term advancements. In advanced countries, that's the way they think. They think global, they think beyond their sphere, they think beyond limits. So we as Nigerians, we as Nigerians, we should try to think in that sphere as well, to create a sustainable system, to meet the demands of people, to meet up with programs, to meet up and just not just that. We should like, now life is a hybrid, mixed technology with our norms, I'm a writer, but I reach out globally to people reach out globally to me. So it's more like trying to think beyond your thoughts, trying to think beyond where you are, thank you. The thing is, there's something I just want to add, there's this concept that everybody is thinking, if you say entrepreneurship, I must own a business, or I must do things somehow. No, do you know entrepreneurs can actually be employed in organizations? Let me give you a very good example. The guys that started this internet banking and U.S.S.D. banking and different form of banking, they're entrepreneurs, but they call them from the theoretical perspective, they call them intrapreneurs. They're intrapreneurs. Entrepreneurs in an organization. Entrepreneurship is about innovation, problem solving in different phases of national development, because the country has problems at different times. How can you solve it is the major thing. All right, so education is really, really key and important to drive entrepreneurship. And I believe that our curriculum across all levels, from cradle to teenage, to open to your high school, university really should be revisited and overhaul to really, really begin to infuse core practical entrepreneurship so that we can begin to build that pipeline of people who would not just chime in to lash on job, but can also become value creators by sporting problems and creating solutions to addressing these problems. Delaware is going to wrap up this conversation just after the break. Do stick around.