Bank PHB restates it commitment to improving the society by partnering two other organisations to bring The Apprentice to Africa
By Blessing Ogunli
Few months after the completion of The Intern, the highly successful business-oriented reality television show sponsored by Bank PHB, the bank is raising the stakes by sponsoring another business reality show. The new show, The Apprentice Africa, is a globally recognised, continental reality television franchise launched in the US and replicated in 23 other countries across the world. It will be produced in conjunction with The Executive Group, TEG, a US-based international investment and consulting firm, who are owners of The Apprentice franchise in Africa, and Storm Vision, one of Nigeria’s leading television production outfits, who are the producers.
The show will attract the participation of intelligent, highly educated and talented young male and female Africans from across the continent as well as those in the Diaspora. After screening that will take place in five locations across the world, the 18 young Africans who emerge will converge in Nigeria for the show. They will be divided into two groups, competing against each other. Each group will be tasked to exhibit its skills in selling a product and the group with the highest sales would emerge as the winner of that task.
The Apprentice as a concept is a replication of the corporate world, with a Chief Executive Officer, CEO, and a complement of directors. The show will allow contestants to look at issues from two broad perspectives with a view to coming up with better solutions to problems. In the first season of The Apprentice in the US, the contest dealt with the age-old question: which gender is smarter? For the opening season of the Africa version, the show will pit Africans in the Diaspora against those on the continent to answer the contentious question: who is better schooled and equipped to take the continent to the promise land?
On a weekly basis the two groups will be required to their creativity, ingenuity, intellectual skills and doggedness in tackling challenges being faced by the average business concerns in Africa, and showing which CEO is better suited for the job. The contestants may be asked to come up with interesting and innovative ways of improving the ticketing sales of an airline. In doing so, the Africans in Diaspora will try and outwit the team made up of home-based Africans. At the end of each task, they will be judged on their ability to work as a team, without supervision and to accomplish set objectives within a specified time frame as well as the ability to anticipate problems and proffer solutions to them. Also, they will be evaluated on their ability to think strategically and constructively, to work under pressure and manage crisis.
The contestants will carry out tasks in the areas of banking, telecommunications, real estate, tourism, manufacturing and other sectors of the African economy. After each week’s task, the losing team is sent back to the boardroom, where the CEO and his directors will judge the performance of each contestant in the execution of the task. While the winning team is rewarded, someone in the losing team is sent packing from the contest for the team’s failure in the task. This will be the process until the emergence of the last man standing, who will ultimately become The Apprentice. The winner from the pan-African cast of 18 Apprentices will get a $100,000 annual salary, a brand new car and automatic employment with Bank PHB.
But why pair Africans in Diaspora against the home-based?
Michael Akindele, Business Development Executive, TEG, said it was designed to resolve the age-old debate between both groups over which is better equipped to tackle the various socio-economic problems hampering growth of the continent.
“The average guy who schooled in the US, the UK and other western countries thinks he is better trained in business than people in the continent. The people in the continent say they are better because they have to deal with traffic, security, and many other peculiar challenges on a daily basis,” Akindele said. He added that the show is designed to offer policy makers on the continent a better perspective of what to look for when they recruit for job openings.Speaking at the unveiling ceremony, Charles Odibo, Manager, Corporate Communications, Bank PHB said the bank is sponsoring the event in furtherance of its commitment to identifying and nurturing a new corps of African youths who would be future leaders of the continent.
Odibo explained that Bank PHB didn’t abandon The Intern for The Apprentice but only teamed up with a global franchise that would better convey their message. Obi Asika of Storm Vision, producers of the show, promised that his company will deliver top class production that will reflect the experience garnered from the 23 other countries where the show has run. “We are not going to deliver anything that is of a lesser quality. What we are going to produce is an Apprentice Africa which is of international quality, following international rules of production but relevant to Nigeria and Africa,” he said.Those who want to be part of the first pan-African business show coming up in October should visit
www.theapprentice-african.com for details. Casting will be done in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, The UK and the US while the production will be done in Nigeria.
source:
The NEWS
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