About GICIP
Global Learning, Industry Exposure & Career Development
Who we are
GICIP brings students and early-career professionals closer to the world beyond the classroom through visits to global organisations, hands-on learning and cultural exploration.
What we are for
Vision, Mission and Values
Our Vision
A generation of young Africans who have seen how the world works at close range, and who carry that perspective back into the work they do at home.
Our Mission
To connect Nigerian students and early-career professionals to global innovation through organisational visits, hands-on learning and cultural immersion, and to keep supporting them through mentorship and job-search guidance long after the journey ends.
Our Values
Exposure over instruction. Curiosity in every room we are invited into. Support that outlasts the programme.
GICIP so far
The programme in numbers
- Running since
- 2017
- Countries visited
- 8
- Host organisations
- 21
- Big-tech placements
- 4
How we got here
The road to the 2026 cohort
- 2017
The programme starts at Babcock
GICIP begins taking Babcock students out of the lecture theatre and into the organisations they had only read about, on the premise that the distance between a Nigerian undergraduate and a global engineering role is mostly informational and social rather than intellectual.
- Before 2023
Silicon Valley, then Dubai
The first overseas cohorts go to the United States and the United Arab Emirates: Silicon Valley, and in Dubai the Silicon Oasis free zone and Internet Village. Europe comes later.
- 2023
Germany for the first time
Berlin and Munich enter the itinerary. On 18 August, Berlin Partner for Business and Technology receives the cohort for an introduction to the German tech and startup ecosystem, the first time a city's own economic development agency hosts the programme.
- 2024
Six weeks, and five of them at 42 Berlin
Running as TechXperience, the cohort is away from 15 August to 27 September. The shape of the programme changes: instead of a tour, participants spend five weeks inside the bootcamp at 42 Berlin, with company mornings at Staffbase, Delivery Hero and Futurium threaded through, and Carl Zeiss, Google and Allianz on the way back through Munich.
- 2025
Rome and the Vatican join the route
Renamed the Global Tech Immersion Program, the cohort travels from 14 August to 25 September across Munich, Berlin, Rome and Vatican City. The argument for adding Italy is that a programme about how technology gets built should also ask what it is built on, and the Vatican's archives are a long answer to that.
- 2026
Six countries, and the name it has now
The programme becomes the Global Innovation and Cultural Immersion Programme. The cohort is away from 6 August to 18 September across six countries, with the week at 42 Berlin as the anchor and hosted visits at SAP and Wolt in Berlin, AWS in Frankfurt, Carl Zeiss in Munich, the United Nations Office at Vienna, Oracle in the Netherlands and the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
- 2026
The job search becomes part of the programme
From the end of September, the months after the trip are run rather than offered: application cycles with deadlines and an evidence standard, a published one-page CV standard, and one-to-one growth sessions for participants who keep to the timelines. The cycles repeat until a role is secured.
