Africa’s Business Heroes Unveils Community Leads and Launches New Scaleup Program

The Africa’s Business Heroes (ABH) prize competition (www.AfricaBusinessHeroes.org) has announced a new Community Lead and ScaleUp Program to provide more enhanced mentoring and networking opportunities for ABH applicants and finalists.

Now in its fourth year, applications for the ABH grant are currently open in both French and English and the competition has already drawn talented entrepreneurs from almost all of the 54 African countries. Entrants have come from a diverse spectrum of sectors including agriculture, manufacturing, ICT, Education, Fashion, Healthcare, Business Services, Media and Entertainment. To date, 32% of the entrants are female and 68% are male. As a Pan-African and all-inclusive initiative, ABH is encouraging entrepreneurs and small-business owners to join the competition and stand the chance to gain many of its benefits including access to training, mentorship and a pool of USD $1.5 million.

ABH has also announced the newly launched ABH Community Lead initiative to foster greater connection and engagement among ABH finalists and applicants. This program will be introduced in and led by:

• Egypt, Cairo – Khadija El Bedweihy, PraxiLabs (https://Praxilabs.com) (2021 1^st Place Winner)

ABH Local Community Lead for North Africa

“I immediately accepted this opportunity. Spreading the word to everyone I know and everyone I can reach about what ABH can do for their startups, how it can impact them just seems right. I am looking forward to lots of events, networking and knowledge-sharing and give-back.”

• Nigeria, Lagos – Chibuzo Opara, DrugStoc (www.DrugStoc.com) (2019 Top 10 Finalist)

ABH Local Community Lead for Anglophone West Africa (Lagos, Nigeria)

“It’s great to be part of this amazing program. I feel humbled to be a community lead working with entrepreneurs out of Nigeria to enable them to leverage the ABH platform to solve their challenges and create African business giants. Excited about the next couple of years – watch this space guys!”

• Cote D’Ivoire, Abidjan – Moulaye Taboure, ANKA (https://bit.ly/3uZRg2I) (2019 Top 10 Finalist)

ABH Local Community Lead for Francophone West Africa

“As the first francophone to ever be in the TOP10 (and the only at the time), I know for a fact that our region has just as much talented as Anglophone Africa. So, I am extremely proud and confident to help more heroes hail from Francophone Africa, watch out for us!”

• Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kinshasa – Patricia Nzolantima, Bizzoly Holdings (www.WorkingLadiesCabs.com) (2020 Top 50 Finalist)

ABH Local Community Lead for Francophone Africa

• As a community lead, I hope to bring value, guidance, support and the necessary resources to DRC’s entrepreneurs. I hope to help entrepreneurs to believe in their dream and trust their process because entrepreneurship is a journey, not a destination. Entrepreneurs are the future of Africa!”

• Kenya, Nairobi – Charlot Magayi, Mukuru Clean Stoves (www.MukuruStoves.org) (2021 Top 10 Finalist)

ABH Local Community Lead for East Africa

• I am excited to be working with ABH as the local connect lead for Kenya. I hope my participation enables ABH to discover more heroes especially in East Africa and encourages more young people to pursue entrepreneurship.”

• South Africa, Cape Town – Mampho Sotshongaye, Golden Rewards 1981cc (www.GoldenRewards1981cc.co.za) (2021 Top 20 Finalist)

ABH Local Community Lead for Southern Africa

“This program enables entrepreneurs to engage with local counterparts, encourage one another as well as showcase their best entrepreneurial abilities. Creating platforms of empowerment is something that is dear to my heart. I am grateful to be given a role to contribute and encourage entrepreneurs to dream big.”

In each of these countries, Community Leads will have a platform to engage, collaborate and build a strong entrepreneurial community in their local markets. They will be organizing a range of offline events for ABH finalists including coffee, outdoor activities, discussions and vision boarding as well as events for ABH applicants such as information and networking sessions, ABH Show viewing parties and livestreams of the ABH Grand Finale.

Alongside the Community Leads initiative, ABH has also launched a new ABH ScaleUp program. The ScaleUp program will provide ABH entrants with holistic training sessions that cover a critical range of business operational areas for entrepreneurs and small businesses including People & HR Management, Strategy Planning, Financial Management, Growth, Fundraising, and Operations & Execution.

The ScaleUp training program will be led by ABH’s partners. Initial programs will cover a Management Development course led by African Management Institute (www.AfricanManagers.org) will equip managers with skills to empower teams and drive performance; an Investment Readiness program designed by VC4A will teach fundraising, negotiating with equity investors, debt finance and more; FinTech training by 10×1000 (www.10×1000.org) to provide entrepreneurs with the mindset knowledge and skills on the latest fintech topics and technologies to  become drivers of digital economic growth; and Financial Management by the South African Innovation Summit (SAIS) (www.InnovationSummit.co.za) to explore key financial topics around financial management to grow a business.

Beyond the training programs on offer to ABH finalists, the ScaleUp program will also include community-based learning sessions that are open to the wider ABH community including past applicants. One such event will be held this Friday, the 22nd of April at 14:00 GMT | 15:00 WAT | 16:00 CAT | 17:00 EAT and will focus on two topics that are vital to master when becoming a successful entrepreneur “Relationship Building” and “Resilience”. Interested participants can register now by following this link: https://bit.ly/36xopcy

To apply to the 2022 Africa’s Business Heroes competition and gain access to a wide range of benefits, enter your application on ABH’s official site (https://bit.ly/3OqQ6oq). You can also follow Africa’s Business Heroes (ABH) on LinkedIn (https://bit.ly/36yDUB9), Twitter (https://bit.ly/3Or4fCd), Facebook (https://bit.ly/3L39gil) and Instagram (https://bit.ly/3kgDMtn).