Success Stories
Angolan Youth Pilot Businesses
Photo: USAID/Angola, Cathy Hamlin
The foyer to the Economics Institute of Luanda (IMEL) is fragrant with the smell of frying pastries. From the front office window a group of students participating in the Junior Achievement (JA) Companies program are selling small sausage pies and cups of fresh orange juice to fellow students passing by between classes. And they are learning to be entrepreneurs.
“I have learned how a business really works,” explains accounting and management senior Priscila Finito. “We learned how to find customers and how to market to them.”
Students in fifteen schools in and around Luanda are piloting Junior Achievement programs this semester, and senior students at these schools are learning to create a business. Over a period of 16 weeks, seniors at IMEL have created small businesses, conducting market research, sketching a business plan, selling shares in order to accumulate capital, and buying raw material for production. Students are guided by volunteer professionals such as accountants, procurement officers, and HR managers that come from companies and other entities such as Esso, Coca-Cola, Odebrecht, Chevron, Alcatel-Lucent Technologies, Ginásio Konceito, the US Embassy and USAID.
“They wanted to make pastries and sell drinks, but the school already has a snack bar that sells pastries and soft drinks,” explains Correia Pongolola, advisor to the IMEL students and supply clerk at the US Embassy. “So they decided to sell the pastries at a cheaper price, and make juice as an alternative to soft drinks. To make the pastries cheaper, they had to make the pastry production more cost effective.”
“After graduation, I want to open an ice cream shop,” explains Osvaldo Soares, 20 years old, as he mixes pastry flour with a hand mixer. “I will need to get some financing, but then I know what to do next. I need to get equipment and a place, and start working to repay the loans.”
By experiencing marketing and competition hands on in the implementation of a business, these students and others benefiting from the JA programs are acquiring basic skills that will prepare them to enter the workforce understanding free enterprise, and sometimes to have the courage to start their own business.
The Junior Achievement in Angola received the support of USAID, Esso, Coca-Cola, Odebrecht, Chevron, Alcatel-Lucent Technologies, and Ginásio Konceito, and in partnership with the Ministry of Education.
