The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and Hewlett Packard (HP) can look back on a highly successful year of collaboration on the HP “Graduate Entrepreneurship Training through IT” (HP GET-IT) program. Launched in May 2008, the GET-IT partnership harnesses Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to provide training and skills development to young people aged 16 to 25 who are unemployed or underemployed, and who lack necessary qualifications. The goal is to help young people gain meaningful employment or set up their own business and, at the same time, promote sustainable industrialization in Africa and the Middle East.

Within this context, the GET-IT program enables trainees to acquire the basics of entrepreneurship and the practical application of ICT solutions in order to address daily business challenges. “HP believes that entrepreneurship is vital for the economy and that young people can play a major role in creating their own businesses and their own jobs,” explains Gabriele Zedlmayer, vice president of Corporate Marketing and Global Citizenship, HP EMEA. 

In 2008, eight GET-IT centers were established in six African countries and 43 trainers were trained and certified to deliver GET-IT training to under- and unemployed youth. Their feedback is consistently positive. Gabriel Ugwu, Technical Manager of the ICT Research Centre of Ebonyi State University in Nigeria, reports enthusiastically: “Since we introduced the GET-IT training in our center, there has been a tremendous awareness of IT knowledge and business skills. More and more people are really getting interested in IT and they enjoy being able to do business with it now. At the same time, the GET-IT training has helped students to improve their business skills and to find work in both companies and government.” Salaminah Ratshidi, who completed the training at the Umsobomvu Youth Fund in South Africa, confirms this: “The GET-IT training has assisted me in the exposure to the world of computers and in being in a position to be employable. Recently, I got employment to do training and administration for a training company. The knowledge of computers that I gained has really helped.”

In view of these encouraging results, UNIDO and HP decided to expand the network of GET-IT centers in 2009. Just recently, the two partners announced the opening of 20 new training centers, also marking an expansion of the geographical coverage of the program. The new GET-IT centers will operate not only in African countries – Algeria, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa – but in Middle Eastern countries, i.e. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Through this expansion, the overall GET-IT goal of reaching 500,000 un- or underemployed youth by 2010 will be strongly supported.

The GET-IT program is part of HP’s Social Investment strategy, which aims at innovating teaching and learning to form successful future innovators and entrepreneurs. Through the GET-IT program, HP provides a grant package worth approximately USD 70,000, including IT equipment, a cash donation, the curriculum as well as training of trainers to the respective local partner organizations.

UNIDO’s role, in turn, through its extensive field office network in Africa and the Middle East, is to identify non-profit organizations to become GET-IT partners and to monitor the activities of these partners to ensure the program’s sustainability. The approach pursued within the framework of the GET-IT program is to instill entrepreneurial spirit and skills in young people with the final aim of fostering private sector activities and SME development. In the words of Mr. Kandeh K. Yumkella, UNIDO Director-General: “HP and UNIDO have been working together to provide IT technology and training to promote innovative uses of ICT to support entrepreneurship, create new business opportunities and help encourage economic development.”

Economic growth depends more than ever on successful entrepreneurship and the integration of young people into the labor market, especially in today’s economic climate. UNIDO and HP’s partnership on the GET-IT program contributes to this and, based on its expansion, will continue to do so more strongly than ever.

For more information, please contact Barbara Kreissler, UNIDO.