Join us in congratulating Hippolyte and Nervis for being selected as the winners of the first African Leadership Bridge scholarship for the TekZone Leadership Development Program. They each will receive the equivalent of $6600 (3.300.000 Fcfa) in leadership development program over the 24 months duration of the program. This includes possibly a trip to the USA to further enhance skills and knowledge.
Leave Hippolyte and Nervis a congratulatory comment below.
At TekZone, we believe that Africa will be lifted into the status of a world leader through its dynamic, innovative and entrepreneurial youth. This program is designed to help young Africans turn these qualities into tangible results
The African Leadership Bridge is championing the next generation of African leaders through sustainable scholarships and a strong support network to provide the tools and experience needed to drive change in the African continent. Established in 2006, African Leadership Bridge has worked with the African Leadership Academy to identify promising African students with a strong entrepreneurial drive and a dedication to the transformation of the African continent through hard work and leadership.
Here are the finalists ALB Fellows for the TekZone Leadership Development Program. 152 showed strong interest, 10% attempted the challenging vetting process. Nervis, Bony and Hippolyte came out on top through their collective vision and their ability to have a positive impact in their community. Join us to congratulate them for this achievement.
As a next step, TekZone and The African Leadership Bridge will collaborate to select the winner(s) for this round of scholarships.
To learn more about this program, visit the following announcement page.
Our goal at TekZone is to make it easier for you to create and market your solutions to local problems. This includes building a professional web presence similar to our own. The course titled “Build Quick and beautiful WordPress sites” available on TekZone Academy (www.tek.zone/academy) will teach how to do that in just 1 week.
Here is a screenshot of a website created by one of the participants.
WordPress is a widely-known platform used by 31% of all websites on the internet! There are so many ways to approach using WordPress that it can be hard to know where to start.
This course will take you on a clear and easy journey through installation, customization, and launch of a WordPress site (without writing a line of back-end code!) so that you can get great-looking websites up and running quickly, whether it’s for a client request or for your own use.
In Partnership with The African Leadership Bridge TekZone is launching a Leadership Development Program tailor-made for young Africans.
Program Overview
At TekZone, we believe that Africa will be lifted into the status of a world leader through its dynamic, innovative and entrepreneurial youth. This program is designed to help young Africans turn these qualities into tangible results. This is achieved through the following 3 steps:
Step 1: set a SMART 2-year goal with measurable impact.
Step 2: create a precise development plan with milestones and assign an experienced accountability mentor to help ensure we remain on track.
Step 3: execute on the development plan through a variety of activities including courses, assignments, discussions, events, book groups and others. This includes the possibility of a 1-week trip to the USA for further development.
Watch the video below for more information:
TekZone Leadership Development Program Overview
Program Qualification
This program is designed for young Africans living in Sub-Saharan Africa. Here are some high-level qualifications:
Have a great idea that can result in the creation of jobs, improve work environment or a positive impact in your community.
Be a resident of one of the participating countries*
Be between the ages of 18 and 35 when applying, although exceptional applicants outside of this age range will be considered
Proficiency in reading, writing, and speaking English is preferred but not required.
Fully commit to the program if selected. This include making time for your development and the requirement to reside in Africa for the full length of the program.
Selection Process
If you are interested and meet the qualification criteria, here is how you can get selected for this program:
Option 1: Signup and take the Leadership Fitness Test on TekZone Academy. We will reach out to you if you are selected after taking the test. Here is how you can take the test
Step 1: create an account at TekZone Academy. Go to http://tek.zone/academy/ and click on “login” at the top-right of the page. Then click on “Create New Account.”
Step 3: use the key below to access the test without paying: “tekzoneldp”.
Option 2: current staff or alumni or TekZone or one of the participating partners and sponsors can nominate you.
Option 3: signup for classes at TekZone. This allows our team to get to know you better and increases your chances of being selected.
About African Leadership Bridge
The African Leadership Bridge is championing the next generation of African leaders through sustainable scholarships and a strong support network to provide the tools and experience needed to drive change in the African continent. Established in 2006, African Leadership Bridge has worked with the African Leadership Academy to identify promising African students with a strong entrepreneurial drive and a dedication to the transformation of the African continent through hard work and leadership.
LEGO Robotics is a hands on, multidisciplinary, collaborative, authentic learning experience, and TekZone wants you to give it a try. In this program, you will learn how to use sensors such as sound , color and touch to have a robot identify different sounds, color and obstacles. You will learn how to make a robot move in various directions and how to measure those moves. You will learn advanced programming techniques that will allow you to build a program autonomous robots able to move and avoid obstacles. Watch the video below for what’s possible after this training:
Who can attend this session?
Anyone passionate about Robotics can attend this session. Below is a copy of the syllabus for this training (French and English).
The sessions are a month long and there is a session every month. You can apply to get the exact date for the session that works best for you. Follow the link below to apply:
Snapshot of some of the equipment available at the center
On June 17, Group TekZone’s founder and CEO Serges Lemo made the trip to personally witness the opening of the first TekZone Center in Douala. Located at Rond Point Maeture in Bonamoussadi, this center is equipped with 3D printer, laser engraver, robotics kits such as Lego EV3, measurement tools such as National Instruments’ MyDAQ . The main objective of this center is to equip local talent to solve problems locally by lowering barrier of access to necessary technologies.
Here are some comments from those present that day:
“I came just by curiosity because my friend told me. I am staying because of what I saw”
“It exceeded my wildest expectations”
“Now I know that I can”
This last comment came from a senior electrical engineering student from a local university. June 17 was the first time in his life that he could touch and experiment with tools he had only learned about in books or simulated in computers. With unprecedented access to tools at the TekZone center, he can now prototype his ideas and create products to solve local problems; now he CAN.
Group TekZone comes with a unique approach in an ecosystem that provides local talent with all the tools necessary to innovate. This ecosystem includes:
An open e-learning platform centered around hands-on and project-based learning. With such an open platform, local entrepreneurs, professors, professionals are encouraged to create and post classes on this platform.
Each class posted on this platform is required to be between 50% and 100% practical. Therefore, student will need access to tools for the lessons. For those who cannot afford the tools, they can access to the tools in their TekZone center.
A network of professional mentors locally, in US and Europe to help guide the participants by sharing best practices and lessons learned from experiences in industry.
Business Services which include project assistance to help get to the first prototype, collaboration with incubation houses to help start a company, investor-project matching.
A network of corporate partners including non-profit organizations that can help by sponsoring various projects.
With this comprehensive approach, local talent in Cameroon can now turn their ideas into solutions and start contributing to the growing list of African innovations impacting the world.
Group TekZone’s goal plans to increase the number of TekZone Centers across Cameroon and Sub-Saharan Africa to help expand coverage of this unique access to technology. If you are interested in joining this movement, contact us.
African Leadership Bridge (ALB) and Group TekZone (TekZone) have entered into a partnership to equip, train, develop and enable Sub-Saharan African youth to create local solutions to local problems. ALB has successfully supported and mentored a number of African students through undergraduate programs in the US. This partnership allows ALB to leverage the infrastructure and services provided by TekZone to extend and scale this effort and impact to those located on the African continent. This symbiotic partnership will allow both organization to provide unprecedented access to tools, training and mentoring necessary for African youth to solve local problems through the use of Technology. “We are excited to begin our partnership with TekZone, as it fully supports our key tenet of enabling the next generation of African leaders and entrepreneurs through education. As ALB announced earlier this year, we are pivoting to working directly in Africa, where we feel we can have a faster impact, and we can make our donor dollars go farther.” –Suresh Sundarababu, ALB Board President As a result of this partnership, 2 students will receive full scholarships from ALB to participate in the 15-week long Robotics Training offered by TekZone in Cameroon in Summer 2017. Each student will learn industrial automation skills necessary to integrate industry and receive tools and knowledge necessary to prototype technology-based solutions to local challenges. “Our goal with this training is to expose students to relevant technologies, train them on how to use it to solve problems, expose them to design best practices, and send them home with a kit so they can continue prototyping solutions as they encounter problems. We are looking forward to expanding on our partnership with ALB to put more tools in more capable hands.”- Serges Lemo, CEO Founder of TekZone.
About the African Leadership Bridge The African Leadership Bridge (ALB) is an innovative nonprofit organization that provides scholarships to promising young African leaders. Joining ALB means more than just receiving a scholarship. We treat our students as part of our family and mentor them through the college experience, ensuring that they build the skills and relationships that will enhance their chances of making a significant impact after graduating. We believe that this experience will prepare these future leaders to tackle important issues with a unique perspective, contributing to the creation of an Africa in which all citizens have an opportunity to realize their full potential. www.africanleadershipbridge.org
About Group TekZone Inc. Group TekZone offers African innovators, makers and SMEs the opportunity and resources to design, prototype, test and market their own solutions. We partner with academic institutions and multinational companies to provide local access to a network of tools, expertise and training to drive innovation and build successful technology-based businesses. Our vision is for every student, maker, enthusiast, engineer & scientist in Sub-Saharan Africa to have local access to the necessary technologies to innovate and solve local problems. To deliver on this vision, we equip each of our centers design and prototyping tools such as 3D printing, machining equipment and necessary software though a membership-based model which significantly lowers costs. We complement this access with training on tools as well as a 360-incubation to help shape future local business leaders. www.tek.zone
