African Entrepreneurship Forum 2021
The Youth Café was honored to speak at the African Entrepreneurship Forum, that took place virtually on the 30th of November, 2021.
The Youth Cafe’s Executive Director, Willice Onyango and a young entrepreneur from our network, Glodine Ndhlovu who is a young business woman and speaker from South Africa. Glodine is passionate and determined to make a change in society. She is the founder of Sugaplum Spa, which was founded in 2014.
While Africa has produced many entrepreneurs, they still face challenges achieving the desired growth and impact. In this regard, the Shared Value Africa Initiative (SVAI) established the African Entrepreneurship Forum to create a platform where the entrepreneurs can connect, share their hopes and challenges, and obtain information on disciplines and practices that can enhance their businesses. The idea being, to create a platform for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs and assist African entrepreneurs on their journey towards contributing to and building the African economy.
The Forum aimed at providing a continent-wide platform that connects entrepreneurs to funders and each other for networking, insights, and access to opportunities to bridge the knowledge gap moving from a start-up to the next level of business. The envisioned outcomes were, building the SVAI entrepreneurs’ ecosystem and information sharing platform, creating a matching platform for investors/funders/grant makers and entrepreneurs and empowering entrepreneurs, and forming links for them to access opportunities.
This year the SVAI has hosted three Forums to provide impactful, educational, and inspirational content for entrepreneurs dialing in from across Africa facing challenging times. As 2021 concludes, and to mark a momentous 10th anniversary of the Shared Value Business Management concept, the SVAI convened the final session to motivate the entrepreneurs as they look forward to a new year, operating during unpredictable times.
The format of this session was a series of brief fireside chats (“quickfire”) between entrepreneurs, organisations working to support entrepreneurs, and those using their expertise to advise entrepreneur all with an aim of reflecting on key lessons they have learnt that they would like to impart on entrepreneurs, and words of inspiration for the near future.
The session began with a welcome note and introduction session hosted by Andrews Akoto-Addo, an investment associate at Ghana Tech Labs. This was followed by the commencement of the fireside chats.
The esteemed panel included young people from all over Africa, they were: Willice Onyango, Executive director of The Youth Café, based in Kenya; Ify Umunna, Co-founder/CEO of Nourishing Africa, based in Nigeria; Buntu Majaja, Director of SA Innovation Summit, based in South Africa; Udoh Charles Rapulu, Tech Startup Lawyer at Team Nominees, based in Nigeria; Siyabonga Tiwana, Co-founder/CEO of Skywalk Innovations, based in South Africa.
The panel resulted in sharing of incredible insights from the young entrepreneurs. The panelists all spoke about their organisations and the challenges they faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as introduced young entrepreneurs from their own networks who spoke about their ventures, challenges they faced and their hopes/advice for young entrepreneurs across Africa.
The synonymous challenges faced by young entrepreneurs in Africa highlighted during the talks were, COVID-19 challenges, during lockdown periods & post COVID challenges, Keeping up with the market and Planning ahead.
The notable advise on how to overcome these challenges were:
Be willing to abandon what doesn't work
Replace old strategies with new ones
Understand Your Personal Habits
One of the earliest challenges to overcome is you. Learn to be self-aware and understand your personal habits, self-development is key in running and managing a business
Manage your motivation
Train yourself to be active and engaged, especially on the days that seem ordinary
Learn How To Be An Ambassador For Your Brand
Bridge the skills gap for employees to adapt to change and for the company to save on hiring costs
Indeed, this forum covered a wide range of insights, resource sharing and words of wisdom – and we do hope that you found nuggets that can help you in your own journey!