Founded and Operated by the Nonprofit: Institute for Research on African Women, Children, and Culture

Only 0.7% of the 4,443,286 female aged 14-24 years classified as poor in Nigeria’s Social Register (NSR) have tertiary education. 11.6% finished secondary school and 75% are unemployed, 22% are employed in agriculture and 3% are employed in non-agriculture sectors. 

Nigeria has the largest out-of-school children globally – over 15 million and disproportionately girls. It is also the epicenter of UNICEF’s forecast that “the future of humanity is increasingly African” as it will account for 1-of-10 births in the world by 2050 when 1⁄4 of the global workforce will be African. With over 230 million people and a median age of 19, Nigeria’s geostrategic significance is constrained by considerable human capital development challenges. Ranked 161 in the World Bank 2020 Human Capital Index, it has the world’s second highest number of persons living in extreme poverty.

Odiso Leadership Academy (OLA) is a female-led college-and-career preparedness startup school collaborating with high-capacity partners to empower talented ultra-poor girls to achieve academic excellence and compete in science, technology, engineering, arts, agriculture, and math (STEAAM). This unique post-secondary pre-tertiary venture will help advance the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals #4 (Quality Education) and #5 (Gender Equality), and enhance the capabilities and functions of its pupilsto systematically improve their lives, uplift their families, impact local communities, and tool up to help lead change. OLA is the sole not-for-profit non-parochial private education equity school equipping the poorest of poor girls from Nigeria’s 36 states to compete creatively and productively in the technology, entrepreneurial, and innovation ecosystem. 

College credit for aligned degrees and career choices is a crucial target at the onset. To this end, OLA is negotiating with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) School of Computer Science and College of Fine Arts which are routinely rated among the best to allow its students to take courses that will transfer and count as equivalent to college credits. It expects that this proof of concept will expand to include the College of Engineering which is already on the ground giving graduate education at CMU-Africa and leading HBCU partners to advance the dual enrollment acceleration strategy for its students. OLA has also enlisted the Edmund Gordon Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME) at the Columbia University Teachers College to enrich, monitor, and evaluate its capacity to administer college-level courses in tune with key accreditation standards.

As a learning organization, OLA will begin in 2026 with a pilot of 15 resident students. Upon completing two years, these students will be able to transfer their college-equivalent credits to accelerate completing their bachelor’s degrees. These beneficiaries will have a binding agreement with OLA to return to Nigeria after studying abroad to serve in the OLA STEAAM Teachers Corps in fulfillment of the National Youth Service obligation as well as to undertake graduate studies in the STEAAM fields to advance OLA’s vision, mission, objectives, strategies, and actions.