By Chris Nomjov
Africa’s Young Entrepreneurs has invested 50 Million Naira into eighty young creative entrepreneurs in Nigeria. The entrepreneurs, who were part of a selection process last year, received the funds, on February 11th, 2015; in a ceremony in Lagos.
The group widely known as A.Y.E; is headquartered in Johannesburg, South and widely regarded as Africa’s largest economic youth group. It launched the entrepreneur empowerment program, with which it set out to identify and tap into the creative intelligence of exceptional innovative African entrepreneurs in Africa.
The inaugural conference and empowerment program for young entrepreneurs titled AYEEN 2014 kicked off in November last year.
The organization with over 12 million members spread across the continent brought the event to Lagos ,Nigeria as its flagship country.
The program hosted over 4000 young entrepreneurs from all over Nigeria and boasted of a successful event. Hundreds of these entrepreneurs were given a platform to pitch their business/ideas to the A.Y.E delegates and international business experts.
Also, participants were exposed to the WBC (Web Business Campaign); a platform to expose their business/ ideas to international investors across the globe. They were taken through different business workshops, free websites were developed for several businesses and a business recognition certificate was issued to facilitate intra-trade and enhance trust in their business relationships.
The AYEEN program went on for 3 days and was a breakthrough for thousands of entrepreneurs in Nigeria. The event was broken into sections, at the upper level of the venue was the conference where speakers such as Mrs. Folorunsho Alakija, who is the Chief Executive Matron of the organization, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (Chief Patron of the organization), Jason Njoku, MI Abaga, Senator Babafemi Ojudu, Sunday Dare, Babajide Otitoju and many others spoke to the participants on different experiences in and the opportunities available for entrepreneurs.
Eighty candidates were shortlisted from the AYEEN 2014 program out of which 23 was selected for funding. The organization set aside 50Million Naira to go towards funding these selected entrepreneurs and are planning to invest three times more in their forth coming event scheduled to hold in June this year.
The funding presentation was held at the Sheraton Hotel Ikeja on February 11th 2015, where the organization’s president, Mr. Summy Smart Francis emphasized the organizations commitment and his commendation for the outstanding business ideas and innovations that was revealed during the program.
The empowerment program will take place in selected African countries over the next 7 years. Mr. Francis stated that with such initiatives, Africa can become self sustainable and doing so, will create wealth and job opportunities in our beloved continent.
The recipients of these funds expressed gratitude and joy for this unbelievable empowerment program. They thanked the organization for their relentless work across Africa towards empowerment of the youth and they encouraged other entrepreneurs to partake of the upcoming in June 2015 program.
