Copperbelt University

ZAMBIA

Jonathan Zilberman, Christ Church, BA Geography, First Year Undergraduate, Remote working

Work Projects

I completed an internship with The Copperbelt University (CBU) Entrepreneurship Centre. Copperbelt quite literally is located on a belt of copper in northern Zambia; therefore, the province is heavily integrated with mineral mining. Working at the centre of this juxtaposition of an entrepreneurship hub in such a province was an exciting prospect. There was a clear twofold purpose of the tasks completed during the internship. Firstly, to facilitate the growth and exposure of the CBU Entrepreneurship Centre.

The two other interns and myself collaborated on creating a newsletter for the Centre aimed at promulgating its benefits to students. Furthermore, we curated a marketing strategy to this end. The second role of the interns was to facilitate Start-up Advisor positions for existing start-ups founded by students at CBU. This ranged from advising their business plans to assisting with developing a pitch deck and researching potential investors to raise seed funding. The role of the CBU Entrepreneurship Centre in outlining the tasks and supporting us throughout was very helpful.

During the three weeks, the interns met with the point of contact within the Centre who would introduce the weeks tasks and the relevant students who we would be liaising with. Afterwards, the onus was very much on the CBU students and ourselves to complete tasks and feedback ideas from one another.

This hands-off approach from the Centre allowed flexibility and allowed greater collaboration among interns and CBU members alike. Finally, there was a weekly feedback form at the end of the week for the Entrepreneurship Centre to better understand how to improve the subsequent weeks work, through implementation of interns’ feedback. This worked well and allowed consistent improvement in communication and feedback.

Daily Life

It was a vast shame that the international internship, which was supposed to take place at CBU in Zambia, was adapted to a virtual format. Nonetheless, it must be said that these three weeks, albeit virtually, provided a lucid insight into the CBU Entrepreneurship Centre and still allowed for impactful work to be carried out.

Zoom was widely used for communication both between the interns and those located in Zambia, which luckily is just one hour ahead of BST! This format worked well, particularly as a majority of tasks were individual. Regardless of the physical distance, I still feel as though I managed to get to know a lot of new people very well.

The remote nature of the internship allowed greater flexibility for when work was done and personal time management. It was very convenient being at home and indulging in home comforts to wind down after staring at a screen for the best part of the day.

Lasting Impressions

The diversity of the tasks throughout the internship at the CBU Entrepreneurship Centre was something which I thoroughly enjoyed. This allowed us to meet more interesting people from CBU and gain a broad range of experiences in the three-week time span. The lasting impression of CBU Centre I received was one of excitement, with plenty of exciting start-ups stemming from the university-style accelerator of sorts.

Further, it was fascinating to witness first-hand how the start-ups coming out of CBU differ from those born from the start-up ecosystem at Oxford! However, the most substantial lasting impression I gained personally was associated with doing business in Sub-Saharan Africa. As it was my first time, albeit remotely, working with start-ups and businesses in this region, it was an eye-opening process; this impression was left both from interacting with individual start-ups and the Centre itself. This will undeniably prove useful for grounding university work and a better understanding of how international development and policy pans out on the individual, micro-level. For example, the absence of potential investors not only within Zambia but in the entire region was surprising.

What advice would you give to future interns?

The main thing I would recommend when approaching such an internship is to ask as many questions as possible as early as possible. This can be incredibly helpful for several reasons.

Firstly, it allows you to learn as much as possible about the problem to be solved and prevents confusion later in the internship.

Secondly, the clarity gained from the questions aids with managing expectations from the offset; managing expectations proved very important during the CBU Entrepreneurship Centre particularly when tasks were flexible. In a time when remote internships are more normalised, this is especially important to bridge the gap between the ability to pop into someone's office for a question in real life, against the tedious process of creating a Zoom call to ask a simple one-line question.

Alessandro Pruegel, Trinity College, BA Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Second Year Undergraduate, Remote working

Work Projects

In the three weeks of the internship, I was given a new project each week. For the first week, I was put in contact with a student at the entrepreneurship centre who was running a business selling underwear, and it was my task to create a business plan for the expansion of his business.

In the second week, I worked with one of the other interns on rebooting the newsletter of the entrepreneurship centre. We created a structure with suggested content for each weekly edition, as well as a plan of how to select an editorial committee and assure that the newsletter was produced and distributed every week.

In the third week, all three of us interns worked together to create an investor pitch for a company trying to design and sell a kitchen appliance all over sub-Saharan Africa. We also created a list of investors to reach out to with contact details.

Daily Life

My daily life during the internship was very well balanced. I was free to plan my day however I wanted to, as long as I attended the zoom calls which we would have about twice a week, and did the work I was asked to. After a slow start to the day, I would usually sit down in the afternoon and do a few hours of work before calling with the other interns to discuss our work and give each other feedback. This self-paced approach was nice because it made it possible for me to do work whenever I was most productive, but also meant I was reachable at any moment by the organization in case something was urgent.

Lasting Impressions

I would say that the internship definitely left a positive lasting impression on me. Although we did lose out on a lot of the cultural immersion that would have been part of the internship if it had happened in person at the entrepreneurship center in Zambia, I learned a lot from interacting virtually with the people at the center.

I'm especially happy about the fact that each week had a different focus, meaning I was able to get a lot of different insights within a relatively short period of time. I very much enjoyed the experience and gained a better understanding of the hurdles that entrepreneurs are faced with in Zambia and sub-Saharan Africa more generally. The internship made me even more convinced of my desire to enter a career in international development in order to help reduce these hurdles.

Alina Marie Kunisch, Regent’s College, BA Theology and Religion, Second Year Undergraduate, Remote working

Work Projects

During each week of the internship, I worked on a different project which made for a varied and interesting placement. For example, I created a business plan for a local student who just started his own business and created a comprehensive strategy plan for the monetization of a mentorship program.

While all interns completed some individual tasks we also collaborated as a team on the last project during which we created a pitch deck for a Zambian start-up and researched investors. Everyone I worked with was very kind.

The host organization seemed keen to make the experience as pleasurable as possible and conducted weekly surveys to assure we were satisfied with the workload, our tasks, treatment etc.

Daily Life

Since the internship was completed remotely, daily life was normal. Due to the varying tasks, each day was slightly different to the other. Some days there were calls with supervisors, whereas on other days everyone was free to create their own schedule.

After already completing Trinity term remotely, I didn't find working from home too much of a challenge. Despite having more freedom of when to work, I think it is useful to treat a remote internship like an in-person one and try to stick to usual working hours.

Lasting Impressions

I very much enjoyed the internship. Compared to previous internships it was lovely that the host organization seemed to really care about the quality of our internship experience. It was also great that everyone was very approachable, and that communication worked well despite being in different locations. The internship gave me more insight into working with young start-ups and confirmed my interest in the entrepreneurial sector.