YouWin Program

The YouWin Program, short for Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria, is the Nigerian entrepreneur-grant program discussed in Piles of cash and a town of solutions in Kenya, Nigeria (Summer School). The episode describes it as a nationwide contest that gave large grants to people trying to start or grow businesses, with screening, training, outside judging, and partly randomized winner selection.

The program is central to the source’s argument for Direct Entrepreneur Grants. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Goodluck Jonathan backed it as a response to youth unemployment, while David McKenzie helped make the selection process experimentally useful by randomizing many winners after initial screening.

Key Claims

• The program tried to solve a capital bottleneck that ordinary banks were not handling for tiny firms.
• The episode says around 24,000 people applied and about 6,000 semifinalists received business training.
• Randomized selection made it possible to compare similar winners and non-winners.
• The source reports roughly 7,000 lasting jobs at about $8,500 per job.
• The program ended after a presidential change, even though it was copied in Kenya and Senegal.

Connections

• Nigeria, Lariat Alhassan, and Larklux Paint - country and business case.
• Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Goodluck Jonathan, David McKenzie, and World Bank - policy and research actors.
• Small Business Financing Gap, Missing Middle, and Randomized Controlled Trials - concepts connected to the program.