You have your reasons for choosing your career but you understand some of the consequences of your decision; and so you take your time to decide a most secure and rewarding career path.

Just so you don’t spend half your entire life thinking of the right career path to follow, here are some tips to help you make this important decision of your life.

Find your forte

If you want to specialise in a particular field, you would have started out on the career path long before now; most likely from college – in the sciences or arts – and then through your university education.

This is obviously necessary to provide you with a strong foundation for your career.

Anyone can be a specialist and anything can be a specialisation. You can choose to be a neurosurgeon or do rap songs. It’s your choice and nothing stops you.

But bear in mind that the smaller your area of specialisation, the fewer your opportunities.

The advantage however is that, as a specialist, you are more valued for your expertise and competence.

The rewards for talented specialists are good; for example, you’ll easily spot out and roll with professionals in your field of specialisation.

As a neurosurgeon, employers and clients will naturally expect more from you than they would from a physician. It may be tough to meet those expectations; but that’s a strong reason to keep updating your knowledge and skills if you want to stay relevant in your field.

I’ll advise you run a blog or write for industry publications on significant developments if you want to be recognised as a thought leader and if you want your name to be top-of-mind when people look for specialists in your field.

The ability to act promptly with strong analytical, problem-solving, decision-making and judgement skills are the key qualities that will keep you in good stead.

A downside to working as a specialist is that you may not be asked for inputs and advice on other business matters. But you can counteract that by taking a flexible approach, learning about the other business functions and networking outside your group – these things will strengthen your designation as a specialist in the company.

And if you decide to fall in the crowd…

If you are interested in handling a variety of tasks, then a career as a generalist is most likely a suitable option to go for.

You first step to becoming a generalist is by building a strong base of knowledge in different business disciplines. Starting from preliminary planning and budgeting to analysis; get set to become a multi-tasker!

Working as a generalist gives you the liberty to apply your principles to more than one sector. You are not restricted to focus on a single discipline. Which means you have better employment opportunities; although, amidst cut-throat competition.

Your advancement and rewards will depend on your accomplishments, your willingness to learn more and your determination to prove your worth in the sector and your industry experience works to your advantage.

Most people are of the opinion that generalists lack intricate knowledge in different fields.

As a generalist; with your knowledge in different key areas across industries, your opinions will be valued.

But as you advance in your career, you’ll need to expand your knowledge base – by scope and depth.

Combining both

One of the best ways to be a competent candidate is to have excellent interdisciplinary knowledge.

A successful career demands expertise in a particular field and indepth knowledge in others – a good blend of specialist and generalist skills.

The post Choosing A Career Path: Are You A Specialist Or Generalist? appeared first on Ventures Africa | .

According to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Olusegun Aganga, the programme was part of government’s proactive strategies to tackle graduate unemployment.

UNEDEP will be implemented by the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (SMEDAN) in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Education.

The programme was created to enhance and re-orientate the values of undergraduates while providing a mentoring platform for students, reduce poverty and youth unemployment, re-orientate the undergraduate toward the right values among other objectives .

Speaking during the unveiling of the programme, Aganga, said the programme would give students the opportunity for practical hands on experience to enable them to successfully manage their own businesses.

“UNEDEP’s mission is to ‘catch them young’. The programme focuses on entrepreneurship development of undergraduates and aims to create future entrepreneurs; encourage self-employment; embed business ethics among the youth and consequently reduce the incidence of poverty.

“We will achieve this by using the existing Network for African Student Entrepreneurs club structure and deriving a standard schedule of activities for all members across all universities.

“Part of our strategy is to assess existing scalable student businesses to determine ways to enhance these, and then, creating a platform for student mentoring by successful entrepreneurs. Our goal is for students to receive the necessary capacity building as part of the activities of the entrepreneurship clubs.”

Relatively, Nigeria’s Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqqayyatu Rufai, in her sppech adjudged that there is need for the country to promote the culture of entrepreneurship among students to reduce unemployment.

“All over the world, entrepreneurship has been identified as the major driver of economic growth and development… The success of many economies can be traced to entrepreneurs who started small and then grew to become multinationals,” she said.

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This article will elaborate on how treating your job as a business, and your boss as a client can make you relevant in your workplace.

Study Your Boss: A good sales-person will rightly affirm that timing is an all important factor in getting across a message about a business with the intention of making prospects buy into the business. I am not much of a salesman either, but I know for a fact that I love it when people acknowledge my moods, my preferences and cravings before they go on and on about why I should spend my money on their product or services. This same tactic is applicable in a typical work-place. Imagine your boss to be a very crucial client, and your job, the product or service you are trying to sell. Before you start thinking of how to sell it, ensure you first take out time to know your target market and who you are selling your product to. A sure way to do is by acknowledging the little things that might seem not to matter-to anyone but your boss- and taking note of factors that might not necessarily appeal to him/her.

Be your Boss’ Yes Man: What does your boss want from you? To make more money for him/her by being productive! Your day to day job might involve mere secretarial activities or actual head on sales and marketing, but the truth about working for organisations is that everyone’s virtual job is to contribute their quota to improving and maintaining the company’s cash-flow. So the question here is; how much of your actual day to day job aligns with the company’s big picture, helps the company to save more and make more money? That’s what your boss wants.

Show You Are Needed: At times it might require a little demonstration but to create a more long standing effect, you innovate. Ideas within a typical organisation are a dime a dozen and very few ideas even get to the stage of being documented on paper or considered commercially viable. In the same vein, many great ideas remain untapped because employees are hardly determined to follow through and critically analyze such ideas before presenting them to their bosses. When it comes to showing how much you are needed in a firm, try not to be desperate, because it shows. Allow your relevance to come naturally or better still make it seem as natural as possible.

What other ways can you make your boss love you? Kindly share your thoughts in the section below.

The post Your Boss Is Your No.1 Client, Make Him Happy appeared first on Ventures Africa | .

The new Dakar-based site is set to provide training programmes to 1,000 managers belonging to the firm’s subsidiaries in West Africa including: Mali, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal.

The company said other managers from Francophone countries like the Central African Republic, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo may also participate in training and courses offered at the campus.

According to Orange Group, the launch of Orange Campus Dakar demonstrates firm’s commitment to grooming its global subsidiaries to take charge of “certain events” directly.

Trainees will be provided with all the essential educational tools while also giving them specialized training sessions for local instructors.

Eight internal instructors have already been certified in Africa, the group revealed in a statement.

These actions will be applied to all the targeted countries, based on their requirements and resources. Each country will also be provided with the necessary support to permit them to independently apply the Orange Campus programmes.

The post Orange Group Launches Managerial Training Course In Francophone Africa appeared first on Ventures Africa | .

Over the next three years, Novartis will support the campaign financially and also donate up to three million full courses of its pediatric antimalarial drug to match the treatments donated by the public, doubling the impact of these donations.

“Malaria is a preventable and treatable disease, yet a child dies from malaria every minute,” the company said in an official statement.

“We believe that this innovative campaign will help speed malaria elimination,” said Joseph Jimenez, Novartis Chief Executive Officer.

“Novartis has been striving towards this goal for more than a decade, and we just reached the milestone of providing 600 million treatments without profit to patients in malaria-endemic countries. No one should die from malaria today.”

The development comes following the backdrop of global funding gaps and concern that the gains made to defeat Malaria could be reversed. The Power of One campaign aims to address this need by closing the global treatment gap between now and the end of 2015 through direct donations and existing government commitments.

“The Power of One campaign challenges the global public to help close the global treatment gap for malaria; every dollar raised will buy and deliver a full course of life-saving child treatment,” said Martin Edlund, CEO of Malaria No More. “We are delighted to be partnering with forward-thinking companies like Novartis to help end deaths from this disease — one dollar and one child at a time.”

Novartis alongside some of the world’s most innovative companies, including Alere who will be providing malaria rapid diagnostic tests, Time Warner, Twitter and others have joined forces to ensure the success of the Power of One campaign. The campaign will use the latest social, mobile, and e-commerce technologies to rally the global public to contribute to the campaign.

“Malaria is a complex issue and needs a multi-pronged collaborative approach. We can’t solve a problem like this on our own,” said Linus Igwemezie, Head of Novartis Malaria Initiative.

“Through partnerships, with organizations like Malaria No More, we can speed up progress toward the ultimate goal of malaria elimination.”

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Arthur Mutambara urged the continent to cease to always accuse Beijing, apartheid or colonialism for its distresses.

Mutambara said it is about time that Africa puts an end to always taking a “romantic view” of China because it has developed from a “comrade in poverty” to an international enterprise and economic behemoth.

“Why are we not making sure the engagement with China is on our terms, as Africans? Labour, skills, technology, value addition,” AFP quoted him as telling delegates at a China-Africa conference.

“The Chinese must come to Africa on African terms. The terms that will allow the Chinese to make money but the terms that will also allow Africa to develop, win-win. China wins, Africa wins.”

He declared that Africa now had been unregimented for many decades and it should not degenerate into trying to find excuses all the time for its sluggish development.

“Africans must not blame China or any other power for that matter. We must take charge of our lives, we must take responsibility for our problems and solve them,” he reportedly told delegates at the conference.

“Yes there are things we can trace back to apartheid, to colonialism, but we must take charge of our lives and not justify incompetence by talking about apartheid, colonialism.”

AFP reported that South Africa has lately been embroiled in a fierce debate on whether – 19 years on – apartheid can still be blamed for current government policy shortcomings.

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According to a UNESCO statement, Ms Alemu was recommended by an independent international jury of media professionals in recognition of her “exceptional courage, resistance and commitment to freedom of expression.”

Alemu wrote critically about political and social issues, focusing on the root causes of poverty, and gender equality and published in many independent Medias. Reeyot Alemu was courageous, in 201o, she founded her own publishing house and a monthly magazine called Change, both of which were subsequently closed. In June 2011, while working as a regular columnist for Feteh, a national weekly newspaper, Ms Alemu was arrested. She is currently serving a five year sentence in Kality prison.

The UNESCO Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize was created in 1997 by UNESCO’s Executive Board. It is awarded annually during the celebration of World Press Freedom Day on 3 May, which will take place this year in Costa Rica.

Reeyot Alemu was imprisoned in Ethiopia for more than a year on allegations of terrorism. According to International Women’s Media Foundation, she is one of many journalists who have been arrested, interrogated and threatened in the East African country.

“What makes Alemu exceptional are her commitment to work for independent media when the prospect of doing so became increasingly dangerous, her refusal to self-censor in a place where that practice is standard, and her unwillingness to apologize for truth-telling, even though contrition could win her freedom”, IWMF said on its website.

While in jail, Alemu was offered clemency if she agreed to testify against journalist colleagues. She refused and was sent to solitary confinement for 13 days as punishment for her failure to cooperate.

In 2012, she was honoured with the Courage in Journalism Award.

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The University will be committed to producing graduates who have skills and knowledge to meet Ghana’s industrial, societal and governmental needs.

African students across the continent would also be able to access the University’s academic excellence in teaching and research.

According to the Project Director of TNE, Ravghav Lal, the University is currently working with Ghana’s National Accreditation Board to secure accreditation to start admitting students in October.

Lal explained that students would be able to choose from a range of undergraduate courses in management, business, international relations, computer science, law and psychology and its high acclaimed Global MBA among other post graduate and foundation programmes.

Speaking on the new development, Rakesh Wahi, founder of TNE said: “the campus is our first education venture in West Africa and share group vision of creating a network of branch campus experience in Africa, through quality teaching, state of the art infrastructure, research led curriculum and innovation in delivery of the curriculum.”

Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Mark E. Smith, stated that the campus “offers students a different learning experience with the future career benefits of gaining a globally recognised Lancaster degree.”

Officially known as the University of Lancaster, the Lancashire-England based university was established by Royal charter in 1964 and it is today recognised as outstanding in research and teaching.

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According to Business Day Nigeria, the donation was announced at the weekend in Lagos during a visit to the office of the president of Dangote Foundation, by a delegation of UNICEF led by Jean Gough, the country representative.

Commenting, Gough said: “Public/private sector interventions such as these in the health sector and other sectors such as water, early childhood development are the way forward for Nigeria to improve the well-being of Nigerian children.”

Measles is a leading cause of child mortality in Nigeria, especially in areas where immunisation coverage is low.

According to report, the trend of measles follows a seasonal pattern with periods of high transmission (January to June with peaks in March) and low transmission (July to December).

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This was confirmed at the weekend by Sonni Yusuf, the Nigerian High Commissioner in South Africa.

Trouble between the two nations started when an over-zealous South African customs official returned a plane full of Nigerians for having an incorrect yellow fever inoculation.

This caused what has become known as one of last year’s most serious diplomatic incidents.

The incident of returning Nigerians to their country made the government of Nigeria very angry, prompting customs officials to start declining visas to South Africans. The situation was only resolved after a humble regret from South Africa.

In the lead up to the appointment of a new leader for the African Union (AU), Nigeria supported Jean Ping, the former head of the organisation. But the South African contender, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma won the elections, much to the chagrin of the Nigerian state.
Again, it is also understood that the superficial attention of the rivalry between the two countries is about the size of the two economies.
Nigeria is due to rebase its gross domestic product (GDP) figures next year. This could boost Nigeria’s GDP massively making it to be closer to South Africa’s.

According to BDLive, if Nigeria’s growth rate remains at nearly 7 percent which is twice that of South Africa’s, the title of Africa’s heavyweight economy will go to Nigeria within a few years.

This could be a great embarrassment to South Africa which has enjoyed the status of being Africa’s economic powerhouse for many years.

Early last year, Kgalema Motlanthe, South Africa’s deputy president admitted that the relationship between the two countries had been going through a difficult time recently.

He said the two countries had to have a heart-to-heart discussion influenced by the spirit of common friendship as Africans with a mutual future.

The Nigerian High Commissioner in South Africa at the weekend said all the prerequisite visas have been allotted to all the members of Zuma’s entourage.

Zuma will meet Jonathan in Abuja and then entertain him next month during Jonathan’s full-blown state visit to South Africa, South Africa’s Department of International Relations said.

The two leaders will discuss and consult on regional and continental issues during the visit.

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