Project A: EduTech’s Organizational Transformation Project (Supporting Obafemi

Awolowo University (OAU) and Ahmadu Bello University

(ABU) eLearning Program)
Country: Nigeria (Africa)

Source of Funding: Venture Garden Group, Obafemi Awolowo University, and Ahmadu Bello
University
General Summary: EduTech ABS, the education-focused subsidiary of Venture Garden Group
(VGG) supports the premier eLearning programs in Nigeria (MBA by ABU,
Zaria and Nursing Economics, and Accounting by OAU, Ile-Ife). EduTech
provides technology and project management expertise to enable these
universities to fulfill their goal of providing access to millions of Nigerian youths.
Delivering on this on EduTech’s part hinged on effective and fit-for-purpose
business and technology processes, team structure and a data-driven business
model.

This project transformed EduTech into a dependable elearning partner for OAU
and ABU, and into a profitable business for the first time since its existence. It
significantly improved the learning experiences for students, enabled professors
and tutors to deliver on course objectives, and increased satisfaction of all the key
stakeholders in the eLearning ecosystem supported by EduTech’s technology.

What problem does this project address?

This business transformation drive was extremely important and urgent because
EduTech’s survival as a business was on the line and the education of the 3000+
students in the eLearning program the business was supporting could have been
disrupted. These elearning projects also represent the great experiment for public
universities in Nigeria and as such a failure would have set back the sector for
many more years, leaving the problem of access to education for the Nigerian
youth unaddressed. The sustainable model developed by the transformation drive
became the basis for more expression of interest by other universities like
Babcock, to engage EduTech for similar projects.

How does this project connect to your proposed endeavor?

I had the privilege of playing a leading role in the organizational transformation

drive. I studied each department’s pain point and nudged their focus towards a
realignment with business goals. I identified process inefficiencies through gap
analysis and led the drive for developing new processes and optimizing old ones.
I drove standardized data-collection processes and created a data-driven basis for
evaluating performance through carefully chosen business metrics. This project
provides me with valuable experience in the elearning industry at a time where
the virtual option was not so popular. COVID has transformed the world in how
 we view virtual education with more people and industry very much open to such
ideas. Working as an intern in the education programs unit of Calix Inc has
shown how my experiences have prepared me to bring incredible value to the
table.

Which entities/organizations in the United States should be interested in

this and why?

The current situation (COVID and the increased preference with virtual and
flexible engagements) in the world demands that businesses become more agile
and adaptive to change in the way business processes are set up to continuously
deliver value to their customer. In the current internship role at Calix, I act as an
internal consultant to analyze problems, develop solutions for optimal business
outcomes. Businesses, both small and large, across all sectors need such internal-
type consultants that can help them constantly evolve as they strive to deliver
value in their chosen market. The education sector is one of such. The pandemic
has totally opened a new way of getting an education with public and private
institutions vying to lead the way in the new norm. My unique combination of
education and experience has prepared me to be suited to helping both public
and private organizations adapt and deliver value in an optimal way.

Technical Summary: EduTech partnered with Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) in 2014 to launch
the first E-learning Nursing degree program in Nigeria and Ahmadu Bello
University (ABU) in 2016 to launch the first eLearning MBA course in Nigeria.
EduTech delivered an application portal, Learning Management Software (LMS),
device procurement services, internet access, training manual documentation,
lecturer training, and customer support. Whilst implementing, EduTech trained
over 200 teaching and academic support staff in digital course development and
content delivery through its LMS; set up studio and data centers, acquired
students and provided student support services resolving over 2,000 user issues.
By 2017 when I joined as a Business Analyst, EduTech was moving from the sale
and implementation phases to the operation/continuous support phase of the
projects. However, the structure of the business was designed to support the new
phase. Staffing had focused on sales and marketing, with the customer service,
software development, project management and design teams neglected.
Processes were either vague, nonexistent, or not fit-for-purpose. Customer
satisfaction was at very low, student enrolment growth stalled, issue counts were
mounting, and the teams were siloed. I was brought in at this period to help the
business evolve into an entity that can support her partners in delivering on their
promise to students.
Working with the General Manager, we designed a new organizational structure,
defined team structures including communications, customer service, and
reorganized the tech team into two sub-teams – front end (UI/UX) and back-
end. I assisted in the internal and external recruitment of team leads, playing
major roles in defining job descriptions and in the selection processes.
 Based on thorough understanding of status-quo, I worked with the team leads to
promote a company-wide understanding of the strategic priorities, using various
communication channels to drive increased understanding of how each role
contributed to the overall business goals. I worked with the various teams to
define data collection standards, harmonizing the data structure from all the
systems and created a process to have them centralized in Google Sheets. I
crafted business performance metrics to enable a data-driven basis for evaluating
business performance and built various operational dashboards using DataStudio
as the visualization platform, thereby turning our systems to a business
intelligence tool. I pioneered dynamic dashboard-based visualization for
monitoring business performance. I worked with the team leads to understand
their processes, optimize old ones, and created new processes where gaps are
found. This drive increased our Net Promoters’ Score from 2.5 to 8 in 12
months. Customer satisfaction increased by over 150%, revenue jumped by 70%
and student population in both programs rose from 2000 to over 5000. The
MBA program graduated the first set of students in 2019. I created and drove the
“my day at work” campaign to help increase the visibility of every role across
every team in the business unit. The transformation project earned me consistent
promotion in every promotional cycle and opened more opportunities to work
on other projects at Venture Garden Group. I consistently presented the
business health updates to the C-suites in the monthly performance meetings. In
2018, I facilitated the strategy formation session for the year leveraging the
transformation of the past 10 months to position EduTech for more growth.

Project Impact: The positive impact generated by the correct business transformation increased
enrolment in the elearning programs by over 200%. EduTech became a
sustainable business with a positive EBITDA for the first time in 2017 and
continued the trend in 2018. The perception of elearning by the student
population was greatly improved as indicated by a Net Promoters Score of 8 in
2018, leading to student referral increase of over 60%. Most importantly, it
ensured that quality education access was extended to over 5,000 young
Nigerians. Based on the strength of the work I did, EduTech today has been
spurned into a standalone entity with partner universities and institutions in
South Africa, UAE, and Malaysia offering over 20 programs.
Important Articles:

Significance for the

U.S.:
 Project B: AgYouth Lab Project

Country: Nigeria and Tanzania (Africa)

Source of Funding: MasterCard Foundation

General Summary: Venture Garden Group (executed by EduTech) partnered with the Michigan
State University’s (MSU) vision of engaged collaboration with The MasterCard
Foundation, and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), to
train 16,000 youth in Nigeria and Tanzania in Agriculture over a 5-year period.
Ag Youth Lab, a $13M project, proposed to use an innovative data and demand-
driven approach to target youth for AgriFood system skills training, match
training to aptitude, track trainee progress, and provide an interactive LMS to
connect trainees with up-to-date technical information and with peers, mentors,
donors, employers, and companies interested in sourcing commodities and
services from youth.

What problem does this project address?

Africa has the youngest population in the world, with almost 200 million people
aged 15-24—a number expected to double by 2045. Although many jobs have
been created by Africa’s growing economies, job creation has not been enough to
accommodate the growing youth population. Across 32 African countries,
citizens regard unemployment as the top problem facing their nations. The rising
youth population is increasingly educated and there is an unprecedented
opportunity for economic and social development if this generation’s talents can
be tapped. Alternatively, youth unemployment could also present a significant
threat to social cohesion and political stability if sufficient economic and
employment opportunities are not available, particularly in fragile states where
one in two youths joining rebel movements cite unemployment as the primary
motivation.
Significant opportunities for increasing youth employment in the agrifood system
exist in Nigeria and Tanzania. Existing youth economic opportunity programs
did not provide participants with in-demand skills in relevant sectors. To achieve
this goal, the Ag Youth Lab aimed to pursue two objectives: 1) create action-
oriented research and knowledge to inform and connect key agrifood
stakeholders and improve the enabling environment for youth employment, and
2) expand and improve the quality of agrifood training programs resulting in
employment and entrepreneurship for youth. The e-platform is critical to
achieving the two objectives outlined. The design, development, implementation,
support, and maintenance of this e-platform was the core responsibility of VGG
as the lead IT partner in the project.

How does this project connect to your proposed endeavor?

I had the privilege of playing a leading role in the design phase of the project.
This gave valuable experience in working with multi-sector and international
 partners in designing technology systems and business processes to support the
delivery of a high impact project with reach beyond my country. I honed the
valuable skill of communicating with professors and professionals alike and
building consensus in driving design decisions forward. I validated my comfort
with ambiguity in being able to navigate the Nigerian and Tanzanian contexts,
bringing clarity through technology systems and business processes crafted to fit
each context. The USA is a multi-context society as well due to her varied
human, value, and cultural landscapes. This project equips me with the capability
to bring value to bear in a multiculturally competent manner.

Which entities/organizations in the United States should be interested in

this and why?
Universities, research institutes, NGOs and technology companies in the US are
constantly striving to leverage contextual technology design and deployment to
leverage economic development in a repeatable and scalable way in emerging
markets and rural economies. My experience with supporting Calix Inc’s vision
of driving broadband access in rural America and Canada is one of such
examples. The disparities in access to healthcare, education, credit, and other
basic and essential needs in rural America leverage experiences like mine in this
project to drive innovative solutions that are contextualized to each local
community.

Technical Summary: Venture Garden Group (executed by EduTech) partnered with the Michigan
State University’s (MSU) vision of engaged collaboration with The MasterCard
Foundation, and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), to
train 16,000 youth in Nigeria and Tanzania in Agriculture over a 5-year period.
Ag Youth Lab, a $13M project, proposed to use an innovative data and demand-
driven approach to target youth for AgriFood system skills training, match
training to aptitude, track trainee progress, and provide an interactive LMS to
connect trainees with up-to-date technical information and with peers, mentors,
donors, employers, and companies interested in sourcing commodities and
services from youth. At the end of five years, Ag Youth Lab will have facilitated
the launch of 300 youth enterprises and the attainment of higher-quality
employment by 11,700 youth. The direct value in revenue to EduTech from this
partnership was $786, 000.
I was the Lead Analyst and Product Manager in the design phase of the project. I
developed program candidate personas for both project contexts, Nigeria, and
Tanzania, to inform customized business and technology systems and processes.
I derived conceptual designs from the project objectives to deliver the e-platform
according to specifications for usability, performance, and functionality. I
designed and documented user application process flows, connecting systems
(application portal, LMS/trainee information system, monitoring and evaluation
tool, and post training lounge) and people towards optimal business/project
results. I also lead in the analysis of risks in both Nigerian and Tanzanian
contexts for proposed program processes and identified risk mitigation strategies.
 I drove engagement with international and multi-sector partners including the
International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), International Gender
Specialists, and tenured professors from MSU, to validate processes and system
designs against project objectives and to gain by-in for design executions. The e-
platform was designed as a cloud application (on AWS) for scalability and
accessibility via web browsers on multiple devices in the project contexts.

Project Impact: The design phase execution enabled VGG to deliver value as the key IT partner
in enabling the AgYouth Lab project to move forward in its drive to bring
economy-stimulating training to over 5,000 youths in Nigeria and Tanzania.

Important Articles:

Significance for the Leveraging technology to deliver access to vital developmental needs such as
U.S.: education, health, credit and so on in rural America, and other left-behind
American multicultural communities is essential to bridge the opportunity gap in
the US and promote equity across all people groups in the US. This supports the
US drive to again lead the world in the equitable distribution of opportunities to
all within her borders, thereby strengthening her position as the premier nation in
the world. An example of this is my current internship at Calix, supporting the
launch of Broadband Academy, a free basic training program targeting rural and
native American communities.
 Project C: Business Transformation Drive – Government Enterprise and Empowerment
Program (GEEP)
Country: Nigeria (Africa)

Source of Funding: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Funds managed by Rockefeller Philanthropy
Advisory – RPA)
General Summary: The Government Enterprise and Empowerment Program (GEEP) is an initiative
mandated by the Office of the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
and executed by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment through the
BOI. The target is to provide access to credit for business purposes for up to 1.6
Million Nigerian medium and small enterprises (MSMEs) and Youth. Venture
Garden Garden (VGG) is the vendor for this project. Our responsibilities
included:
● Program Management Office (PMO)
● Development of Core Disbursement and Collection Technology
● Manage Technology Vendors
● Manage Agent Networks
I came at a time of change as the Business and Operations Manager. The Ops
manager and Business Manager who led the design and kick off of the projects
just transited out and more importantly moved to the client side. It introduced
complexities. They knew the project well which was a positive and there wasn’t a
barrier to onboard new managers on the client side, but they also knew the
weakness of GSV as the service provider and consultants to the project. I was
able to deepen trust amongst all stakeholders with stellar stakeholder
management. I was able to bring all stakeholders to the table, something that was
previously impossible, and closed protracted contractual issues.
I led the redesign and updating of the operations to meet the client's needs
working with my GM and the team in a very speedy manner. I was able to work
with everyone to explore what was wrong and what needed improvements. I
developed and implemented operational procedures thus eliminating chaos
leading to increase in processes efficiency and stronger metrics across the board.
The overall impact was improved customer happiness and stronger processes
that led to further stability of the project. The revamp drive led to the program
being repositioned for sustained growth, affecting millions of businesses today.

What problem does this project address?

This project reorganization drive was very important as trust was lost amongst
the key stakeholders with contractual dispute and huge aging receivables
disrupting the smooth operation of the nationwide credit program, affecting
hundreds of small businesses and households.
 How does this project connect to your proposed endeavor?

I had the privilege to manage this business and operations for VGG between
2018 and 2019, coordinating project managers, business analysts, the tech team
and other project vendors, solving technical, business process, personnel and
contractual issues which could have jeopardized the goal of the project and derail
its lofty ambitions.

Which entities/organizations in the United States should be interested in

this and why?

The current situation in the world demands that businesses become more agile
and adaptive to change in the way business processes are set up to continuously
deliver value to their customers.

Technical Summary: The GEEP program was launched as one of Nigeria’s National Social
Investment programs under the management of NSIO to alleviate poverty by
providing access to funds for Nigerian entrepreneurs who will otherwise struggle.
This program was launched with two broad objectives:
● Access to funding: provide microloans in an easily accessible way to
those at the bottom of the pyramid who engage in commercial activities
but face significant challenges with access to finance/credit
● Financial inclusion: through these microloan offers and access to
finance, ensure that the beneficiaries are brought under the formal
financial sector and can further seize the opportunity to access other
credit products from financial service providers.
Consequently, GEEP launched three products namely: MarketMoni,
TraderMoni, and FarmerMoni. In its literal meaning, these names were coined
from the pidgin language understood by Nigerians.
● MarketMoni – “money for the market” – a loan scheme that provides
interest & collateral-free loans to SMEs within established market
association clusters.
● TraderMoni – “money for traders” – a microloan scheme that provides
interest & collateral-free loans to petty traders & artisans in Nigeria.
● FarmerMoni – “money for farmers” – a loan scheme targeted at farmers
belonging to aggregator farming groups.
Venture Garden Garden (VGG) is the vendor for this project. Our
responsibilities included:
● Program Management Office (PMO)
● Development of Core Disbursement and Collection Technology
● Manage Technology Vendors
● Manage Agent Networks
I came in at a time when trust was lost amongst stakeholders including the
project team at the Bank of Industry (BoI) and technology vendors. The program
was beginning to suffer from poor/outdated operational procedures,
technological failures, and poor data standards. This hindered the disbursement
of loans to approved applicants and prevented prospects from applying for the
program. I was able to bring the stakeholders to the table, worked to resolve
 contractual issues and got sign off on the agreed addendum.. I worked with all
stakeholders to develop and implement operational procedures and drove data
warehousing standards across all vendors. This helped to reposition the project
for increased success.
Project Impact: The overall impact was improved customer happiness and stronger processes
that led to further stability of the project. On the strength of this revamp, the
project today boasts over 1.3M wallets created, 1.8M beneficiaries (54% of these
are women), over $75M disbursed and about $9.5M in loan repayments.

Important Articles: “Government Enterprise and Empowerment Program (GEEP)” Growth Platform Website
(BoI)
https://www.growthplatform.me/geep.html

“Government Enterprise and Empowerment Program (GEEP) Operations” by RPA

Website
https://www.rockpa.org/project/support-for-an-enabling-regulatory-
environment-sere/government-enterprise-empowerment-program-geep-
operations/

"Secret Behind TraderMoni: The Technology, Process, People" by Ayodele Oluwagbemi

https://punchng.com/secret-behind-tradermoni-the-technology-process-
people/

Significance for the

U.S.:
 Project D: Supervision Mode at the Institute for Public Service: Effects on Job Satisfaction
and Employee Performance
Country: United States of America

Source of Funding: None

General Summary: The Institute for Public Service (IPS) has 175 total employees. Those 175
employees work from Knoxville, Nashville, Jackson, Memphis, and Johnson City
with direct supervisors housed only in Knoxville and Nashville. This means that
there are staff who have their supervisors on-site and others who are remotely
supervised. We investigated how this arrangement affected job satisfaction
amongst the employees. We used “number of complaints” as an indication of job
satisfaction. We were really motivated to investigate this problem as it can
potentially affect the performance of the IPS as an organization – a very serious
implication that demands executive attention.
Using statistical methods, we analyzed performance data and complaints data
collected over 12 and 3 months respectively. While we could not prove causation
between remote supervision and increased number of complaints nor between
supervision mode and performance, we found that performance rating suffered
from a reluctance by managers to sufficiently differentiate between good and
poor performance. We offered recommendations on how to rectify this with
training. We also recommended that data for both performance and complaints
be collected over the same period for further analysis.

What problem does this project address?

This project aimed to investigate the effect of the supervision mode – remote or
onsite – for employees at IPS and how these affect their job satisfaction and their
performance on the job.

How does this project connect to your proposed endeavor?

I had the privilege of playing a leading role in the analysis of the data, interpreting
them and in drawing up recommendations for the executive leadership at IPS.
This project gave the opportunity to help an organization in the US investigate a
business problem using data and drawing on my experiences and education at the
University of Knoxville.

Which entities/organizations in the United States should be interested in

this and why?

The current situation in the world demands that businesses introduce innovative
approaches to how work is defined to remain competitive for talents. Remote
and hybrid modes of working are now more commonplace than before. Coursera
and Calix are just two examples of companies that have embraced the remote
mode of working, making supervision a much more pivotal cog in the wheel of
 organizational success. Using statistical methods to investigate business issues
provides a cost-effective diagnostic method to complement other
troubleshooting methods. This applies to both public and private organizations.
Technical Summary: The Institute for Public Service (IPS) has 175 total employees. Those 175
employees work from Knoxville, Nashville, Jackson, Memphis, and Johnson City
with direct supervisors housed only in Knoxville and Nashville. This means that
there are staff who have their supervisors on-site and others who are remotely
supervised. We investigated how this arrangement affected job satisfaction
amongst the employees. We used “number of complaints” as an indication of job
satisfaction. We were really motivated to investigate this problem as it can
potentially affect the performance of the IPS as an organization – a very serious
implication that demands executive attention.
I served as the project coordinator, and I also drove the analysis and
interpretation sections of the project.
We employed stratified probability sampling in the collection of our data. The
population that we are considering is divided between employees who have on-
site supervision and remote supervision. We have chosen to stratify our sample
to mimic the population (staff of IPS). We went with a probabilistic approach in
our sampling because it enables us to make inferences about the population of
interest – the 175 employees at the IPS. To be able to make reliable inferences,
we need a sample to be approximately normally distributed. The general rule of
thumb is that as n gets larger (minimum n=30), we approach normality faster.
We have chosen to go with n=60. 60 employees were randomly selected by the
Human Resources department, 30 each from on-site and remote supervision
categories. We carried out t-tests and simple regression analyses to test our
research questions regarding the job satisfaction (indicated by number of
complaints) and employee performance at the Institute for Public Services, TN.
Our research questions were as follows:
1. Is there a significant difference in job satisfaction (indicated by the
number of complaints) between employees who have their supervisor
on-site and those who are remotely supervised?
2. Is there a significant difference in employee performance between
employees who have their supervisor on-site and those who are remotely
supervised?
3. Does job satisfaction (indicated by number of complaints) predict
performance?
4. Does performance predict job satisfaction?
From the analyses carried out, we concluded that:
1. There is no statistically significant difference in the job satisfaction
(indicated by number of complaints) of employees at the Institute for
Public Service due to the different supervision modes. This means that
the IPS does not need to act based on the indication by the differences
in the means of the two samples, the difference is not significant.
2. There is no evidence indicating that there is a difference in employee
performance levels due to supervision modes. The data suggests that
 there are not significant differences in performance of employees in both
supervision modes.
3. We noted that there exists a central tendency bias in the performance
scores for employees who are collocated with their supervisor. This
means more supervisors are rating their reports in the median score of 3
(meet expectation). This central tendency bias seems to be less in the
performance scores of the remotely supervised employee.
4. Employee job satisfaction (indicated by number of complaints) is not a
predictor for job performance. The data we have does not present any
evidence supporting this. Also, the evidence suggests that performance is
not also a predictor for job satisfaction.
We gave the following recommendations to the management because of our
analysis.
We noticed a central tendency bias in the performance data and encouraged the
HR team to conduct training for the managers on how to best evaluate their
reports in a way that truly differentiates and rewards good performances. We also
suggested that the complaints mode be changed to anonymous to increase
comfort level for the staff at IPS in providing more honest feedback.
Project Impact: The positive impact generated by the analysis prepared IPS for the fully remote
supervision mode necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The
recommendations allowed the executives to have in their hand an empirical
playbook to help the organization navigate the new normal.

Important Articles:

Significance for the Employing statistical methods to test hypotheses is vital to the United States in
U.S.: the age of conjectures and “fake news”. The availability of persons with such
capabilities stands to benefit the US in helping her make decisions based on
sound empirical analysis, providing her the ability to speak with measured
authority on the leading issues of our day.