Peter Uzoho
The year-long Impact Africa Social Entrepreneurship Summit will end on September 30, 2021, with the announcement of the winner of the Elevator Pitch Competition.
A statement yesterday explained that the competition was opened to budding social entrepreneurs across the continent.
It’s objective was to expose the participants to the rigour of pitching and winning funding by submitting a 5-minute video presentation to a panel of international venture capital scouts.
Judges of the competitions were:
Nashilu Mouen-Makoua, an early stage investor and executive at Clay.run, a First Round and Sequoia-backed company in New York and Abdul Ly, a software investor at Index Ventures, a $10 billion venture capital firm based in San Francisco, London, and Geneva.
Others were Iheanyi Ekechukwu, an angel investor and Senior Software Engineer at PlanetScale, New York. He is also a scout for Kleiner Perkins one of the largest venture capital firms specialising in investing in early-stage, incubation, and growth companies.
The competition also has Tom Barnes, a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where he specialises in market entry, innovation and growth strategy among the judges.
“Over 190 applications were received and each judge was assigned a batch of submissions to assess based on the pitch criteria published on the Impact Africa Summit website. The competition was open to submissions over a 6-month period.
“The competition is sponsored by AFREXIMBANK and FSDH Aseet Management with the winner receiving a contribution to the development of their business pitch idea.
“The closing ceremony will also feature the final webinar in the series titled Networking and Communication – the 2 key tools that every social entrepreneur needs to attract attention and qualify for funding,” the statement added.
It disclosed that speakers at the webinar are Lillian Moremi, Learning & Development Practitioner at Career Coaching, Botswana; Dr Evans Duah, Lecturer, Akenten Appiah-Menka University Of Skills Training And Entrepreneurial Development (AAMUSTED) in Ghana; Ama Duncan, CEO OF Ama Duncan Consulting, Ghana and Surika Behrens of South African Hub Manager, Social Enterprise Academy South Africa.
The webinar will be moderated by Meekness Lunga-Ayidu who is the Science and Higher Education Programme Manager, British Council in South Africa while the Closing Ceremony by Karl Belizaire, Senior Consultant, British Council’s Global Social Enterprise.
“Impact Africa Social Entrepreneurship Summit is a partnership by the British Council and Ashoka to accelerate innovative solutions to Africa’s most pressing challenges by inspiring, supporting and connecting leading social entrepreneurs and key ecosystem players across countries, organisations and sectors such as policy, social investment, business and media.
“British Council and Ashoka are inviting all participants of the Elevator Pitch, their families and friends as well as all African social entrepreneurs, media organisations, policy makers and educational institutions to register to attend the closing ceremony at www.impactafricasummit.net on 30 September 2021,” it added.
