ExxonMobil Foundation, in partnership with Junior Achievement Africa, is supporting over 1,500 secondary school students across Africa through its 2025 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Africa programme.
The initiative, launched in Abuja, Nigeria, seeks to cultivate the next generation of innovators by providing skills and resources to pursue careers in STEM fields.
The programme, spanning Nigeria, Angola, Namibia, and Mozambique, includes weekly quizzes, regional competitions, and innovation camps designed to enhance critical thinking and collaboration.
In his address at the event, made available to our correspondent, the Executive Director of Junior Achievement Nigeria, Ugonna Achebe, said the effort targets a fresh cohort of students to maximise reach.
“We aim to equip young people with the tools to become digitally savvy leaders,” Achebe said at the launch, which featured a quiz contest among five schools.
“Students who participated in this programme last year are not participating in this program. This is a totally new batch of students because our aim is to ensure that we reach as many students as possible and equip them with the necessary skills to become conscientious business leaders and digitally savvy youths,” he said.
“Our aim is to ensure that we improve students’ critical thinking skills and their collaboration skills because, at the end of the day, it’s what we feed the students that will enable them to have the capacity and the growth to make an impact in our nations,” he added.
The Managing Director of ExxonMobil subsidiaries in Nigeria, Shane Harris, was represented by the Community Relations and Operations Manager, Nigel Cookey-Gam.
Cookey-Gam explained that the foundation decided to back the programme because it observed that STEM is an area many children don’t want to pursue, especially girls. “So we’re focused on building interest and encouraging them,” he said.
Harris also noted that the foundation is not executing the programme in Nigeria alone but is running it in four countries at the same time, including Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, and typically everywhere ExxonMobil operates.
“At every point, it’s all about exposure for them. It’s not just about winning; it’s about being exposed and developing their capacity in the area of STEM,” he stated.
Giving a breakdown on the impact of the programme so far, he said the programme has reached over 6,000 students across Africa through weekly STEM quizzes, zonal competitions, and hands-on innovation camps.
“The programme also significantly narrowed participating students’ knowledge gap on STEM topics, particularly in Nigeria, where students recorded a 212 per cent improvement on their STEM knowledge quiz scores,” Harris further said.
He informed us that at the end of the 2024 edition of the program, students who deliver the most promising STEM solutions will be selected to represent Nigeria at the regional industry conference in South Africa.
In a goodwill message, Director of M&E Maria Okhilo, representing the Director-Secretary of the FCT Secondary Education Board, Mohamed Sani, applauded the initiative, stating that students in the capital city have gained significantly in scientific innovation and entrepreneurship education.
“Our students have broadened their innovative scientific horizons. We are particularly grateful that our children can look at things and the environment in a very different way because of their interactions with you,” the secretary said.
