In its effort at improving the competitiveness of Nigerian graduates in the global market place, Total recently sponsored six Nigerian undergraduates from different universities in the country to France for the maiden edition of the Total Summer School, an energy seminar organised by Total Corporate University.

The programme which ran for one week brought together 55 students from Nigeria, Iran, Indonesia, Britain, Angola, Italy, Germany, China, the United States, Bolivia and Argentina to discuss key energy issues with Total managers and other external resource persons.

Over 30 managers from the Total Group together with energy analysts and geopolitical experts from around the world presented key energy issues and challenges and shared their knowledge and experiences on economics, geopolitics, climate change, corporate social responsibility and the future of energy with the students.

The programme which is designed to be an annual event targets Finance, Engineering and Earth Sciences students in their penultimate and final years in the university and is aimed at broadening the students' horizon of the energy industry as well as showcasing Total as an international recruiter with a commitment to diversity in its human resources policy.

The six students that went on the educative trip are Ogaga Esharefase and Thompsonba Briggs of the Department of Petroleum Engineering, University of Port-Harcourt; Olabode Bankole and Idowu Akinrelere of the Department of Applied Geology, Federal University of Technology, Akure; Daniel Macaulay of Accounting Department, University of Jos and Victor Nwatu of the Chemical Engineering Department of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri. The students were picked after a competitive selection test conducted by the company.

At a welcome reception for the students on their return from Paris, the Managing Director of Total Upstream Companies in Nigeria, Mr. Jacques Maraud-des-Grottes congratulated them for being the pioneers of the programme and promised that the company will continue to assist outstanding students by exposing them and broadening their knowledge. He further informed that the company was undergoing tremendous growth and will need to recruit young professionals, expressing the hope that some of them will be willing to work for the company after graduation, if they satisfy the requirements.

The students expressed their appreciation to the company for the opportunity and promised to put the knowledge gained to good use.

Total has always invested in human capacity development with various educational development projects both within and outside its host communities. It would be recalled that Total established a world-class petroleum institute, Institute of Petroleum Studies (IPS) in the University of Port Harcourt for post-graduate studies in Petroleum Engineering and related fields in 2003, the first of its kind in this part of the world.