7Up Bottling Company has reaffirmed its commitment towards developing business education in Nigeria by creating a pool of highly skilled business managers that will drive strategic growth in the country.
This vision is evident in its grant of the 7up Harvard Business School MBA Scholarship award to a mechanical engineer, Mayowa Kuyoro. The award, which is the third of its kind – after Misan Rewane and Olujimi William earlier received the $100,000 two-year scholarship – aims to provide young and qualified Nigerians with the necessary business and leadership skills needed for the sustainable advancement of the country’s growing economy.
“One of our problems in this country is leadership. We want to fill the gap by training young Nigerians in Harvard where they can acquire leadership skills to save our country from future leadership problems,” said Femi Mikikan, 7up’s Executive Director.
The country’s educational sector has so far been characterized as ‘below par’ – plagued with poor infrastructure and low quality educationists, it produces graduates said to lack the skills and knowledge required to improve businesses and are thus tagged ‘unemployable’.
This challenge is proving to be a major drawback for an economy tipped to become the largest in Africa by the next decade and the 30th largest in the world by 2014, as qualified and well equipped graduates become harder to recruit.
With the recent influx of investors and foreign firms setting up operations in Nigeria and seeking to develop a basic local workforce, the immediate need to improve its educational output is of greater urgency.
The bottling company’s initiative should therefore come as welcome addition to the government’s strides towards producing an enviable human capital base.
Established in 1960 by a Lebanese, Mohammed El-khalil, it is considered as one the largest manufacturing company in Nigeria. It produces and distributes top brand soft drinks including Pepsi, Mirinda, Seven Up and Mountain Dew, with 9 manufacturing plants situated in strategic locations across the country.
