At the Seventh Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy in Lima, Peru, Youngstars Foundation and Instituto Invertir organized a workshop on October 15 to ask, “What can be done to empower youth through economic inclusion?”

A well-rounded set of recommendations emerged from the workshop:

• Promote entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship (nonprofit sector).
• Include youth in planning processes on economic issues at all levels. Reach out to youth to listen and build trust. Help them to articulate their issues and give them platforms.
• Provide access to information on how to start a business, how to find a job, and what opportunities and resources are available.
• Provide technical assistance to entrepreneurs, especially through civil society. Give them tools such as leadership, teamwork, and conflict resolution, as well as technical, management, and vocational skills.
• Connect entrepreneurs with each other and connect different sectors that support entrepreneurs (universities, financial entities, businesses, NGOs, etc.). Share best practices.
• Improve education policy and address structural challenges so young people will have the right skills for the job market.
• Do not stop with training, but track the progress of participants in youth programs.
• Support youth initiatives at the local level.

Continue reading ‘What Can Be Done to Empower Youth Through Economic Inclusion?’ »

World Development Report 2013 suggests that countries should focus on creating jobs with greater development payoffs. This makes me wonder whether we should also place more emphasis on those entrepreneurial ideas and businesses that could potentially improve the business environment in which other entrepreneurs operate, thereby generating a reproductive effect on the reduction of unemployment. Some tech start-ups in developing countries may just offer such a great example – displaying high levels of innovation such ventures mitigate the challenges of other entrepreneurs and SME owners face in doing business.

To showcase some of these innovative and promising start-ups in Africa, DEMO Africa is hosting its annual conference in Nairobi, Kenya, from the 24^th to 26^th of October 2012. Among the top 40 finalists who are going to demonstrate their products and services at the Conference, some have a great potential to improve the ease of doing business in Africa.

For example, Sasa Africa is an e-commerce platform that enables offline crafts persons in developing countries to connect to online consumers around the world using its proprietary mobile technology. The platform could generate cost-savings for both sides and also provide a great way for the craftsmen in the developing countries to reach the global marketplace. MPayer, a mobile and web application, helps businesses manage their transactions and view their operational information such as incomes, expenses and customer information. Mlouma, through web, mobile, and call center services, provides farmers reliable agricultural information in real time; and Dash2do, an online service network platform, connects small service providers to end users.

Continue reading ‘African Start-ups Create a Better Business Environment’ »

IMANI, a Ghana based think-tank, recently discovered that many successful entrepreneurs in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya own on average six businesses each.  These “parallel entrepreneurs,” as The Economist dubs them, often create networks of businesses across different sectors in order to fill gaps that exist.  One respondent to IMANI’s survey owned 60 firms!

As The Economist sees it, there are several reasons for this hyperactivity.  In areas emerging from periods of civil war, such as Liberia, entrepreneurs see many opportunities for wealth during reconstruction and take advantage of the moment.  Others start new ventures when approached by friends or regular customers who have come to trust their quality and request new services. Continue reading ‘Filling the Voids: Why African Entrepreneurs Own Many Businesses’ »

Nigeria’s entrepreneurs are expressing a good deal of optimism, according to a recent survey by the Legatum Institute. Indeed, 82 percent of entrepreneurs believe Nigerian society has become more welcoming of entrepreneurship in the past 10 years. Download the Nigeria 2011 survey of entrepreneurs.

Some interesting facts from the survey:

• Nigerian entrepreneurs are largely motivated by a desire to be independent (32 percent) or to make a difference (28 percent).
• Contacts with other entrepreneurs form the single greatest source of individual desire to become an entrepreneur (30 percent).
• In the survey, 74 percent of respondents became entrepreneurs out of choice, 23 percent out of necessity, and 3 percent are following family tradition.
• Views of state governments’ performance are higher than views of national government performance. 73 percent reported that state government is doing a good job versus 63 percent reporting that national government is doing a good job.
• Nationally, the most cited factor needed to achieve future growth is to clean up corruption (45 percent).

Continue reading ‘Inside the Minds of Nigeria’s Entrepreneurs’ »

The Kaknock Foundation is moving a step ahead toward empowering small scale businesses for young people.  By providing youth with commercial and industrial information and skills, Kaknock helps young entrepreneurs present a point of view on the ways and means of increasing economic prosperity.  These insights are compiled and crafted into specific policy messages, which are then presented to international forums through policy platforms, publications, and the organization’s website.  The Kaknock Foundation ultimately aims at stimulating a more enabling framework of social and environmental young entrepreneurs through the following objectives:

• Uplift the welfare of the poor through elimination of corruption, creation of jobs, raising small scale industries, and reaching out to the poor from a grassroots level.
• Unite young entrepreneurs in business relationships.
• Create income generating activities for young people.
• Become a bridge between young people and the government in trade and networking.
• Encourage young people to become entrepreneurs.

Continue reading ‘Kaknock Foundation: Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development’ »

The Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship released its first Young Upstarts Report on youth attitudes toward entrepreneurship, showing a high level of interest in starting a business combined with insights on the challenges facing entrepreneurs.

As far as attitudes go, the culture of creativity is widespread among South African youth. For many, creativity fuels their entrepreneurial dreams. Understanding and experience, however, are more limited. Most do not realize that entrepreneurship requires hard work and more than a good idea. Many would select the food and beverage sector for a new business–a highly competitive sector–presumably because it is familiar to them.

Continue reading ‘The Young Upstarts Report: Youth Perceptions in South Africa’ »

I have a project which aims at training youth in paint and soap making productive business. The name of the project is Youths Creative Movement of Sierra Leone, west Africa. Our project trains community-based youth in paint and soap making, who are expected to establish their own enterprise, be our selling agents, or get employment elsewhere after being well trained and qualified.

The youth creative movement is an indigenous independent and non-governmental organization, specially developed to alleviate the excess poverty in our community. By promoting the social and economic powers of our youths–who are the active body of our society and 60% of the country’s total population–by providing them training courses in trades that will create jobs and self–employment for self-reliance and self–sufficiency, e.g. paint making, soap making. The movement is born from the global advocacy on poverty alleviation and the need to promote the living standards of our community youths.

Continue reading ‘Youth Creative Movement in Sierra Leone’ »

HELLO OUR GOOD VIEWERS!

This is Arinitwe Stephen Da Entrepreneur / Bizness Resource Manager (Presenter) from:

YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS, A business program that inspires, motivates and innovates the youth to acquire business skills.

DO watch out for several entrepreneurs as they take us down the road to their success. Only on UBC TV every Friday at 7:30 p.m. A repeat is on every Monday at 10:00 a.m.

Are you running a productive bizness or a project, as a group, a school, an organization/association, a company or an individual? Please feel free to contact us and we will give you coverage for your venture.

Continue reading ‘UBC TV Young Entrepreneurs (Uganda) – “A Networking Center for Entrepreneurs”’ »

The African Leadership Academy (ALA) and Mastercard Foundation are seeking entries for the Anzisha Prize. The Anzisha Prize recognizes innovative, entrepreneurial solutions (for-profit and non-profit) to community challenges. $70,000 USD in prizes will be awarded, and eight finalists will win a trip to an entrepreneurship workshop at ALA in South Africa. The deadline to apply is 31 May 2011. Entrants must be between the ages of 15 and 20. The first prize will be awarded in August. See contest details and apply here.

Comment here or share a message with the Community of Young Entrepreneurs: partners@cipe.org

Ghana – The Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance, whose mission is to capture, inform and engage Africa’s youth, held a half-day roundtable with leaders from Ghana’s private sector at Ghana’s Parliament to discuss how the private sector in Africa can engage Africa’s youth. About 20 participants from organizations such as GlaxoSmithKline, IBM, Fidelity Capital Partners, Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC and others attended. The second half of the day was a youth roundtable in which 10 Ghanaian youth participants met to discuss the challenges facing youth entrepreneurs in Ghana. CIPE Program Officer Kelly Spence attended the event and also met with the Private Enterprise Foundation, the Institute for Economic Affairs, USAID, the Whitaker Group, the Ghana Chamber of Oil and Gas, and the Business Sector Advocacy Challenge Fund while in Ghana.

Continue reading ‘CIPE Entrepreneurship Update’ »