FITC Initiates Essay Competition to Reward Young African Undergraduates

Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) has inaugurated the “FITC Youth Connect Initiative”, an essay competition aimed at rewarding young African undergraduates.
Information about the competition is in a statement signed by Mrs Chizor Malize, the Managing Director of FITC on Friday in Lagos.
Malize stated that the maiden edition of the competition was for undergraduates in higher institutions of learning across Africa.
She added that “the Youth Connect Essay Competition seeks to promote creative talents and spur innovative thinking among young people in Africa.
“It focuses on the theme — ‘Accelerating Growth and Development in Africa: The Role of Technology and Innovation’. Given the wealth of talents and resources in Africa, there is an explosive opportunity for growth and development. It is no gainsaying that Africa needs to embrace technology to realise the African Union’s 2063 Transformation Agenda and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”.
She noted that, the realities of modern civilisation had shown that technology could speed up significant improvements in the social and political conditions of nations “and can be a vehicle for innovative solutions to local challenges. The young tech community can help decision-makers to implement workable technology solutions from country to country”.
The managing director, therefore, noted that FITC was investing in the future through the “Youth Connect Essay Challenge” to support this drive and ensure youths’ participation in the transformation of the continent.
She explained that “entries must be written in English or French, the essay must not be less than 1,000 words. Entrants should show originality, creativity, clarity and focus on the topic, plagiarised, co-written, and pre-published entries will be disqualified and each entrant is required to submit only one entry to the competition. The first prize winner will go home with 1000 programme, laptop, leadership certification and one year mentorship programme, while second prize
winner will get 500 U.S. dollars, a laptop and one year mentorship programme”.
She said the third prize winner would get a laptop and one-year mentorship programme, adding that the submission would close on Aug. 31.
FITC was established in 1981 as a non-profit organisation to provide capacity building and serve as a knowledge hub for the Nigerian financial services sector.