Nairobi’s women-led organization Zuhura Africa has announced its commitment to supporting the youth through innovation, entrepreneurship, and technology.
The firm supports the early-stage innovators and entrepreneurs to grow and scale their business, through social innovation boot camps.
Ideally, Zuhura focuses on championing the youth agenda thanks to the high number of people living in Africa between the age of 15 and 24, making the continent the youngest population in the world with upward of 200 million people in that age bracket.
Projections state that the number could go to as high as 400 million in 2045. Therefore, there is a need to support them.
Considering the high unemployment rates in the continent, Zuhura Africa is providing them with tools and a platform to create businesses for sustainable development and help them make employment for themselves and others.
Since it officially went live, the firm has had had programs such as Africa Basque Challenge (ABC), an entrepreneurship experience where young people from different countries co-create social enterprises addressing challenges affecting their communities.
The program started in November 2018 and February 2019 and involved 48 innovators from Kenya, Somalia and the Basque region (autonomous community of Spain).
The Bootcamp entailed six days in Kenya and a week in the Basque Region. The challenge encouraged young people to co-create and transform the ideas into businesses.
At the end of the session, 11 companies were created by multi-disciplinary teams. The teams pitched their project ideas to potential investors and the winning teams were awarded 15,000 euros. They are currently running the third edition, which will focus on Kenya & Senegal youth.
They have also partnered with UNICEF in their global program, UPSHIFT which helps youth in technology and innovation, by digitizing the program for the Kenyan youth.
The program began in October and will conclude this Feb 2022, where the selected project team shall receive seed funding and also the remaining teams will be guided on how to get funding from government and private investors who believe in their cause.
“Despite Being a young women-led organization, at Zuhura Africa, we understand the challenges facing Africa’s youth, for this reason, we are champions for promoting both entrepreneurship, business scale-up and innovation to support Africa’s youth as a whole,” says Zuhura Africa, Hub Manager, Muriel Akiko.
