Shingirayi Kondongwe is a tech-entrepreneur, a policy analyst and innovator who founded a tech platform, Youth Opportunities Hub, which is based in Zimbabwe, South Africa and other African countries.
The platform publicizes various youth opportunities such as scholarships, jobs, fellowships and internships, allowing African youths to access various global opportunities.
“When I came back to Zimbabwe from the diaspora around March 2020, it just took me two months of my stay in the country to realize that not much was being done when it comes to the dissemination of information regarding youth opportunities. I realized that the problem we have today is getting information to young people, and that’s how Youth Opportunities Hub was born” Kondongwe says.
Shingirayi is also a Tony Elumelu Foundation Competition winner (class of 2019) among other young tech entrepreneurs honoured in Africa. He is also an African Union Scholar (class of 2020), United Nations Graduate Study Fellow, and a former key member of the United Nations Development Fund, Regional Bureau for Africa.
He says one of the motivation factors behind the Youth Opportunities Hub platform is that he himself is a beneficiary of various youth opportunities, the most notable one being a scholarship from the African Union Commission which earned him his Master of Science in Energy degree and as such he wanted to unlock opportunities for talented young people who may be stuck and hopeless in their quest to advance their careers as well as honing their skills.
The impact of Youth Opportunities Hub
Over the past two years, Youth Opportunities Hub has reached over 20 million views (visits) through its platform www.youthopportunitieshub.com , creating opportunities for them to utilize their skills in various fields.
At present, the Youth Opportunities Hub platform currently attracts three million website views on a monthly basis from 100 countries across the globe and that indeed is a game-changer in transforming lives of ordinary youths in search of opportunities.
They have done business with many prestigious institutions across the continent. YOH is also forging partnerships with various Youth Organisations around the continent and the notable partnership that they are working on at the moment is with SAYouth, the largest Youth organisation in South Africa. SAYouth is responsible for connecting employers to the youths that are in dire need of employment.
“In conjunction with SAYouth, we are developing a system of tracking progress and impact, for instance, which youths benefited from a training program or employment and how? This data will help us to understand the impact of our programs in the context of developing youth skills,” Kondongwe stressed.
YOH’s advocacy for acceleration of youth skills spreads beyond the confinements of the Africa region as it is also partnering with global institutions.
“Recently, we partnered with International University of Applied Sciences (IU) from Germany. IU is currently offering 80% scholarships to prospective students for all Bachelor, Master, or MBA degrees. The idea is to make education accessible to everyone who would like to grow on personal and professional level. The nature of our partnership is to promote this offer through our website,” he said.
You can check out Youth Opportunities Hub for yourself with the link here.
