IN AUGUST, when Chris Kwekowe met Bill Gates during a television interview that featured some of Africa’s brightest young entrepreneurs, he didn’t ask the Microsoft founder for a job or business advice. Instead, the 23-year-old Nigerian told Gates how he had turned down a software engineer role at Microsoft. “[Gates] was really intrigued, and he smiled,” says Kwekowe, 23. “After the program, all the directors were like, ‘Dude, you mean you actually turned down a job at Microsoft and had the guts to tell Bill Gates?”
Kwekowe had good reason to reject such a good officer: He was building a startup called Slatecube to help other young Nigerians find jobs. A January 2016 survey of 90,000 people in Nigeria found that 45 percent of graduates were unemployed. Research has found a key reason that employers often reject graduates is a lack of professional skills— critical thinking, entrepreneurship, decision-making—that Slatecube nurtures through digital internships.
A computer science graduate from Lagos, Kwekowe founded Slatecube with his brother Emerald, 20, in October 2014. The pair funded their efforts by freelancing as web designers and running a software solutions company.