Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (05 July 2022)
Unemployment and underemployment have become increasingly common among Ethiopia’s recent university graduates. Derja.com was founded in 2017 in an effort to fill a void in career guidance and resources by collaborating with the Ministry of Labor and Skills and the Mastercard Foundation. In the five years that the company has been in operation, it has held 23 job fairs, trained 100,000 students, and assisted 60,000 of them in finding decent work.
Dereja’s annual career expo 2022, designed to connect students with potential employers, was expected to attract hundreds of companies and over 4000 graduates. To that end, the company has scheduled a series of job fairs at five universities across the country, including Hawassa University (June 21), Haramaya University (June 22), Jimma University (June 29), Addis Ababa University (July 01), and Bahirdar University (August 11).
Four of the five job fairs have concluded successfully, with only one remaining in Bahirdar next month. According to Simret Yasabu, Ethiopia Lead Program Communicator at Mastercard Foundation, the first set of expos in June (Hawassa, Haramaya, and Jimma) attracted 2,000 students and 80 employers, including Heineken Breweries share company, Enat Bank, Huawei International, Save the Children International, People in Need, World Vision Ethiopia, and Unilever Manufacturing PLC.
The one in Addis Ababa (Sidist Kilo campus) alone attracted more than 1,500 students and over 70 national and international companies including the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia, the United Nations Office for Project Services, Habitat for Humanity, Ahadu plc, Horra Trading, Care Ethiopia, Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, Micro Pharma plc, and EthioChicken. Biniyam Elias, a graduate who attended the Hawassa University expo, went as far as saying, “This to me is an opportunity unlike any other. Not only do I get the chance to submit my CV to different companies that would otherwise be far from my reach, but I also find several of them at the same place.”
To read more on Dereja’s vision, key interventions, and more, visit: https://www.dereja.com/about-us
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