The Emerging Leaders Initiative brings together the next generation of social entrepreneurs from around the world. Selected and supported in partnership by the Skoll Foundation and The MasterCard Foundation, the Emerging Leaders represent the great potential and passion existing in social entrepreneurship’s future leaders, addressing a wide range of issues like energy access in sub-Saharan Africa and the links between corruption and natural resource exploitation.
Cohorts are selected from those already demonstrating leadership qualities and making significant efforts to bring social change in their communities. The primary goal of the Emerging Leaders Initiative is to create a tailored learning experience to develop relationships and resources that extend well beyond the Forum that will help grow their impact on the communities they serve.
Currently, only Skoll Foundation awardees and MasterCard Foundation partners are eligible to nominate individuals to participate in the initiative. We continually evaluate new partnership opportunities and content ideas. If you have any questions about the Emerging Leaders Initiative, please submit your inquiry to emergingleaders@skoll.org .
2017
Dorcas Amoh-Mensah
Through the Sani Foundation, Michelle seeks to facilitate the full inclusion of individuals with intellectual disabilities into Zambian society. A cornerstone of its work is the Sunshine Zambia Project, which provides holistic, relevant training to prepare adolescents and young adults with intellectual disabilities for employment and independence within their community. While employment training services in Zambia typically segregate individuals with disabilities, with few trainees ever graduating to mainstream jobs with fair wages, Michelle pursues a person-centered model that assists those with disabilities in securing and maintaining jobs in the open labor market. Michelle was motivated to research international best practices for addressing the needs of the people with intellectual disabilities as a result of having a brother with Down Syndrome. Through the Sani Foundation, she also advocates for the adoption of more inclusive job market policies, while promoting to employers the commercial benefits of a diverse and inclusive labour market.
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Sam leads Global Witness’s work on data-driven investigative journalism and digital storytelling. His work focuses on the use of data to fight corruption and how to turn this information into change making stories.
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Name: Godwin David Msigwa
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Olivia is the Executive Director of B Lab East Africa. In her role, Olivia is working on building a community of people using business as a force for good in the region. Prior to this role, Olivia was the Global Partner Manager at B Lab supporting its network of regional partners. She also worked as a Standards Analyst helping companies going through the B Corp Certification process, and supporting impact investors to measure and report their social and environmental impact.
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After receiving her bachelor’s degree from University of California-Los Angeles and her master’s degree in clinical psychology from Pepperdine University, Yamin returned to her home country to lead Proximity School, a corporate university that provides technical and soft skill trainings to hundreds of staff across rural Myanmar. Yamin has prior experience providing mental health services to individuals, couples, and families in California and in Myanmar. Whether it’s providing mental health counseling, or conducting trainings on a larger scale, Yamin’s passion lies in making a personal impact on people’s minds and paths, and helping maximize individuals’ potentials.
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“The surest way to keep people down is to educate the men and neglect the women. If you educate a man you simply educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a whole nation" James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey - Ghana
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A descendant of refugees that survived genocide, Antranik Krikor Ozanian, 27, Switzerland, was born to Armenian parents in Bulgaria, as the cold war was ending in 1989. Blessed with new opportunities, Antranik grew up in U.K. with a strong desire to pursue a career helping to prevent future violations of human rights. He completed a Bachelors and Masters in Laws at the University of Manchester, followed by both working in Atlanta, USA protecting prisoners’ rights on death row and working in The Hague assisting the prosecution of war crimes at the UN ICTY. In 2014, Antranik was called to the Bar of England and Wales at Middle Temple, receiving the Dean’s List Award for highest score in advocacy. Drawing on his advocacy skills and armed with creative ideas for justice reform, Antranik immediately began working at International Bridges to Justice where, in addition to fundraising, events management and programme monitoring and evaluation, he is currently spearheading the IBJ JusticeHub, an innovative technology platform that supercharges networks of justice stakeholders around the world.
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Kpetermeni is a native of Liberia but spent his formative years between Liberia and Ghana during the civil wars in his home country. Whilst a MasterCard Foundation scholar at Ashesi University, Kpetermeni helped combat the Ebola outbreak by drastically shortening the time it took health officials to get actionable data from the field.
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Zeeshan has been contributing to India’s development sector for over 12 years and currently heads the program division of Educate Girls, an organization focusing on holistically tackling issues at the root cause of gender inequality in India's education system. He is responsible for designing and managing the program strategy of Educate Girls that reaches out of over 600,000 children in over 12000 schools in India. He is also a member of the core team implementing the World’s first Development Impact Bond in the Education sector. Prior to Educate Girls, Zeeshan has worked with numerous national and international developmental agencies like the Aga Khan Development Network, Magic Bus India Foundation and the Times Foundation. With a Master of Business Administration degree in Social Entrepreneurship, he also mentors and serves on the board of two growing non-profit organizations: Srujna and Darwesh, and is helping them in strategic management and sustainability.
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Fhazhil is a passionate educator and a budding social entrepreneur in Information Technology and energy systems. He is currently the partnership director of M-Soma Institute, a social venture preparing young people in East Africa for successful careers in Information Technology and entrepreneurship. M-Soma Institute offers pre-university training in computer programming and software development and general technical entrepreneurial training to high school graduates through boot camps as well as through its online and mobile platforms.
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Amanda is Medic Mobile's Director of Impact. She determines what metrics to measure across Medic's project implementations and builds systems to accomplish it. Amanda is passionate about leveraging data to design and scale technologies and workflows that have increasingly greater impact in the communities in which we work. Using principles of Human Centered Design, she also leads the organization's efforts in piloting new use cases. Previously, Amanda spearheaded the organization's data visualization efforts, designing and building dashboards to support operational decision making and impact monitoring for CHWs, clinics, and ministries of health.
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2016
Valerie is originally from Haiti and responsible for managing corporate and foundation partnerships for Kiva. Prior to joining Kiva, Valerie managed corporate partnerships for the Pan American Development Foundation in Latin America for three years where she developed regional multi-sector alliances. In 2008, Valerie was a Kennedy Fellow with the Haitian American Organization for Women where she focused on youth entrepreneurship and arts education. Valerie holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Stanford and a Master’s Degree in International Relations from the University of Cambridge.
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Makafui Borbi is from Ghana, and is pursuing a Master's degree in Food Science. Growing up in Ghana, she realized how much agricultural produce is wasted during bumper harvests. This realization spurred her to seek solutions to this problem. Currently, Makafui is pursuing the feasibility of setting up a food processing factory in her community to process and preserve fresh agricultural produce in order to minimize post-harvest waste. Before coming to MSU in 2014, she was a teaching and research assistant at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Together with other teaching assistants, she helped to found Dynamic Research Access Media (DRE-AM) in 2013. DreAM is a registered NGO based in Ghana with the mission of communicating science and technology, and health-related research findings to local communities. DReAM’s major goals are to promote primary prevention of diseases; provide a vehicle through which to communicate science and local research findings to communities; support and promote science and research in Ghana; and to educate local communities on science and technology.
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Eye-opening experiences in her young days in Thailand and a strong sense of empathy led Anouck to engage in humanitarian work from a young age. In her work with the UN and grassroots NGOs across continents, she's had diverse roles from monitoring and evaluating social developments programmes in rural India, to advocating for the rights of refugees vis-à-vis governments and international donors in Iran and Rwanda.
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Antonio Fonseca joined Imazon as a trainee in 2008. In 2010 he graduated in environmental engineering and was hired as an assistant researcher to work at Imazon's deforestation monitoring program. In this program, I have quickly gained remote sensing end Geographic Information System (GIS) skills that led me to assume a technical coordinator of Deforestation Alert System (SAD). As current attributions, I am responsible to run SAD every month, coordinate the team and prepare the reports that are evaluated by the program supervisors. I have also gained experience in communicating SAD results to the general media in Brazil. In 2016, I will be seeking for graduate program in US Universities to strength my academic skills and expect to return to work in the Amazon region in the field of forest monitoring.
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Diana N-PelineKombui is a member of CAMA (Camfed Association) – the pan-African network of educated young women. A third-year undergraduate at Central University College,she is currently pursuing a BSc in Banking and Finance, supported by Camfed in partnership with The MasterCard Foundation. Diana is President of her university’s CAMA Campus Club and doubles as the Secretary for the Camfed Ghana-MasterCard Foundation Scholars Leadership Program. Diana has worked as an intern with Camfed Ghana to help organize leadership and enrichment activities for senior high school and tertiary students.
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A 25-year-old from the D.R. Congo fled from his home country to Uganda at the age of six due to conflict. With his friends, Munyambanza co-founded the organization COBURWAS International Youth Organization to Transform Africa (CIYOTA) at age 14 to educate refugee youth from Congo, Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda, and Sudan. Munyambanza excelled in his studies in the refugee camp in Uganda and graduated from the African Leadership Academy in 2010. He is a member of the British Council Global Changemaker network and a fellow at the African Leadership Network. Munyambanza is one of 15 young people chosen to serve as advisors on international education to the UN Secretary General. He graduated in biochemistry at Westminster College a MasterCard Foundation Scholar. He is the force behind different new initiatives in innovative education to empower young leaders in the Congo and Uganda. He was recognized along with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia as one of four Global Citizen Award winners of 2013. He was recognized named one of The 99 most influential Foreign Policy Leaders under the age of 33 by the Diplomatic Courier magazine. Munyambanza also awarded the Trailblazer Award by the African Leadership Academy in 2014
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Jean Bosco is the Founder and CEO of HABONA Ltd, a company that provides integrated waste management services and further processes the waste into affordable and environmentally friendly fuels such as biogas and biomass briquettes. Jean Bosco oversees the overall company management, public relations and fundraising. Upon founding HABONA, he was crowned as the 2014 Top Young Entrepreneur of Rwanda and he received the 2015 young achiever award by the First Lady of Rwanda. He has also won a number of other prizes, including the African Innovation and the India-Africa Young Visionary prizes. Jean Bosco holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Rwanda and is completing his final papers of CPA. He was selected as the 2015 Mandela Washington Fellow through the flagship program of the President Obama for Young African Leaders. Public speaking appearances include at the 2014 Pan-African Youth Conference and the 2014 Rwanda Day Celebration in Atlanta. He has also been invited by HRH Prince Andrew to pitch his business in Buckingham Palace, UK.
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Angela has a background in Business and Information Technology and is currently the Co-Founder & Country Manager of Pluspeople Kenya, an IT-company in the financial inclusion sector that focuses on empowering small businesses in East Africa by providing them with IT solutions that enable them to manage and run their businesses more professionally.
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Nica Santiago currently oversees the iFIGHT program at Visayan Forum Foundation, which seeks to empower youth as a driving force in fighting human trafficking and other forms of exploitation. As iFIGHT Coordinator, she works to develop partnerships with schools, colleges and local government units and is primarily responsible for leading major events, delivering speeches and seminars on human trafficking, and developing iFIGHT chapters. Nica is also a filmmaker, having been recognized at various festivals both domestically and internationally. Her short film, “Sa Wakas,” which discusses the right to reproductive health, won prizes at Cinemalaya 2013 and the Active Vista Film Festival 2013 and received selections at festivals in Poland and Australia as well. She is also an Artist-Teacher at the Philippine Educational Theater Association, where she conducts workshops regarding children empowerment and community resilience. She graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in Mass Communication from Far Eastern University, Philippines.
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Sarah was born in France to a Tunisian father and a French mother. Influenced by her father who worked for years in the nonprofit sector, Sarah got involved in social causes at a young age to build youth centers, computer labs and public libraries in Tunisia’s marginalized communities. During her time at the Sorbonne, Sarah founded DREAM, an incubator for social and environmental students projects in Paris. In 2011, following the Tunisian revolution, Sarah, who had been leading a very comfortable life in Paris, decided to go back to her homeland of Tunisia. In Tunisia, Sarah saw that the levels of rural poverty, resulting from land desertification, were rapidly increasing. This eye opening experience led Sarah to her conviction that desertification and environmental degradation, leading to rural poverty, was the most pressing issue facing her community. She started by organizing a program called "Castle of Knowledge" in her grand-parents village (Bir Salah), offering women and youth the opportunité to get access to cultural and educational activities. Then she started planting trees with this community and created Acacias for all. Sarah is an Ashoka Fellow and Echoing Green #Climate Fellow.
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2015
Lashon faced tremendous obstacles in his life, meeting racism, getting involved with the criminal justice system, and losing his father to street violence. These adversities caused him to become apathetic about education and ultimately led him to drop out of high school. He enrolled in YouthBuild, where the staff there empowered him to want more for himself and consider post-secondary education, leading eventually to enrollment and honors received at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Today, Lashon works at YouthBuild USA as the Student VOICES Coordinator and represents YouthBuild on the National Council of Young Leaders- Opportunity Youth United. In both roles, he serves as a local and national student leader, participating in speaking engagements across the country and connecting more opportunity youth to college and career pathways. He also serves on the Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee for the Governor’s office of Massachusetts.
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During my student days, I already realized that my business degree needed to be used for something more, besides just making money . Now, I spend my days with the Friends-International teams that that save lives and build better futures for children, families and communities around the globe. Seeing our solutions really work for the people – that’s something worth being part of. My role is to make sure that everything what we do is supported with the highest standard in management and the developments of our teams. At the Forum, I look forward to working with other organizations that also tackle important social issues and discussing how all these organizations and ideas can work better and work together for the world around us.
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Natalie Moore is the Education Community Manager at Apps for Good. She joined the Apps for Good education team in January 2013, and since joining has grown the community of UK Education Partners from 100 to 500. Prior to this role Natalie worked for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games as the International Education Programme Coordinator for the Education Team. While in this role she managed an international school linking programme as well as supporting, developing and building relationships with schools that were part of the UK Get Set network. Natalie is particularly passionate about using education and new initiatives to create an environment that allows young people to be inspired and to achieve.
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Regina is co-founder of Asikana Network, an organisation that trains Zambian girls and young women in information and communications technology skills, so that they can find better jobs and realise their potential. Regina is planning to link Network members to mentors in order to develop their skills further in the future.
Joseph has a wide range of experience promoting youth development in Ghana, West Africa. He worked with the West Africa Civil Society Institute, Children and Youth in Broadcasting and Springboard Roadshow Foundation, among others. He also organized youth-oriented programs supporting career advancement, entrepreneurship and investment. He founded the Youth Impact Workshop to help build the capacity of young people in Ghana to design, prototype and implement social enterprises at school and in their communities. Joseph is an alumnus of African Leadership Academy and currently a MasterCard Foundation Scholar at Westminster College where he is majoring in Transnational Studies and Entrepreneurship. He also serves as a member of the MasterCard Foundation Youth Think Tank, a platform he is using to research on youth engagement issues in Sub-Saharan Africa. At Westminster College, he is a member of Westminster Poverty Initiative, Student Ambassadors and Westminster Service Corps.
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Wiclif Otieno is a former street boy in Nairobi with a deep passion for social justice and a drive to create economic opportunities for young people in Kawangware slums. After becoming an orphan at the age of 7, he joined the streets to fend for himself and survived on the streets of Nairobi for five years. He was rescued by an American couple who invested in him by helping get him to school and other training.
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I graduated with a Bachelor of Social Work and minor in Human Services at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, and joined Fundación Paraguaya in 2012. As Poverty Stoplight Coordinator, my responsibilities include the management of relationships with 18 organizations abroad replicating this methodology; communications with Hewlett Packard for software development; supervise methodology implementation at 35 private enterprises, governments and churches in Paraguay; lead team in charge of developing tools and solution strategies to the different Poverty Stoplight indicators. This team trains FP loan officers who in the past 3 years have helped 24000 families overcome income poverty, and 3200 families overcome poverty as measured by the 50 indicators in the Poverty Stoplight.
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I am an ordinary woman but lucky enough to start my career in an NGO I’m proud to join at 2010. We nurture those innocent children either orphaned or at risk to reach their full potentials, through affluent programs and caregiver trainings. After having my own baby last year, I devote more with a whole heart to protect those fragile angels.
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2014
Abigail is a remarkable young woman and a champion of social and economic change in her nation.
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Rafiatu Lawal is passionate about education and the development of disadvantaged and rural communities. She comes from a family of 11, from a small village called Daboya in the Northern Region of Ghana. She is teaches home economics and general science at Nahadah Islamic Junior High School in Tamale. She is also the past national chairperson of CAMA (Camfed's Alumnae) network in Ghana. Cama is one of a kind in Africa, bringing together young women change-makers. It seeks to break the cycle of poverty in their families. She is deeply interested in education and in working to ensure that every child gets the opportunity of going to school. She is an alumnus of The MasterCard Foundation Youth Think Tank.
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Jenna Wachtel is an Associate Program Consultant for New Teacher Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving student learning by accelerating the effectiveness of teachers and school leaders. There, she works directly with teachers and the coaches of teachers in high-needs, low-income communities to enhance teacher practice and expertise, resulting in tremendous gains in student achievement. With a dedicated team, Jenna is launching the New Teacher Center's Early Learning Initiative which will increase access to high-quality support for teachers serving children ages 3-5.
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Social Entrepreneur. Cancer Survivor. Cathedral Builder. Marcel is co-founder of Din4mo, a social enterprise that empowers entrepreneurs to develop innovative business models that solve social problems. Marcel served as CEO of CDI Global, social organization pioneer in using technology to transform lives and develop communities. Through a social problem-solving methodology, CDI has impacted 1.64 million people in 15 countries in 842 centers in 20 years. Marcel started as entrepreneur when was 17 years old by creating one of the first internet cafés in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Founded associations to work with policy makers and organize the field. Joined the global movement of B Corporations and co-founded Sistema B Brasil with the objective to create a community of companies that use business as force for good. Co-author of Negócios com Impacto Social no Brasil (Editora Peirópolis, 2013), first book about social business in Brazil, and Economia Criativa: Um conjunto de visões (Fundação Telefónica, 2012). Co-founder of Din4mo – Intelligence in impact businesses and nanoentrepreneurship. Major in Business, earned his MBA at ESPM with extension at University of California. He is now Masters Candidate at the London School of Economics (LSE) in Public Administration. Recently was appointed civic entrepreneur by RAPS (Network of Political Action for Sustainability) with the objective to work with the social society and policy makers and inspire innovation and new public policies. Per his journey as social entrepreneur, he was appointed to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. He is amongst the top 10 most inspiring CEOs in Brazil by GQ Magazine. He was amongst the Young Leaders Initiative organized by the Skoll Foundation and the MasterCard Foundation in 2014.
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While studying Information Systems Management at Ecole Centrale Paris, Ghislain spent a few months travelling through Cambodia where he volunteered with several NGOs and social enterprises. He graduated in 2007 with a major in Entrepreneurship and decided to further get involved: he returned to Cambodia and started to work for Friends-International. During 5 years based in Phnom Penh he advised and trained local teams developing and running projects supporting unemployed young people and caretakers in accessing better economic opportunities to build their futures. His work took him to Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Honduras. In 2013 he became Program Director for Indonesia, leading the development of a new program for Friends in Jakarta.
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Jamiel Alexander was written off as a negative statistic of street life in Philadelphia. He was court appointed to do community service in York, Pennsylvania in 2001. There he completed the Crispus Attucks YouthBuild Charter School AmeriCorps Program; he remains an active alumnus. Jamiel served as Manager of Youth and Family Programs for 12 years and was responsible for a variety of tasks from grassroots organizing to leadership development. Jamiel is always willing and ready to serve the community in any capacity. In 2012 he was appointed to serve on the National Council of Young Leaders as an adviser to policymakers. In 2014, Jamiel’s colleagues on the YouthBuild National Alumni Council elected him as their President. He was also appointed to the Aspen Institute Opportunity Youth Incentive Fund (OYIF). The OYIF is collective impact work that brings stakeholders together from all sectors.
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Julia Corvalan is an international development practitioner from Paraguay. Having worked in the field since 2007, Julia has expertise in a variety of areas ranging from micro-finance & micro-enterprise development, to entrepreneurial education & financial literacy.
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Born, raised and educated in Malawi, Mphatso Kachule is a growing leader in the NGO/social enterprise sector in Malawi. She has worked in various industries in her 6 year career as a development practitioner, gaining a unique management perspective.
Mahdi is the operations officer at INJAZ El Djazair, the Algerian branch of INJAZ Al-Arab, an affiliate of Junior Achievement. While he was in college, he created a [what kind of?] company called Zine Zmen with the support of INJAZ El Djazair. After a year, Zine went bankrupt and Mahdi worked in the foreign guarantees department of the ARAB BANK ALGERIA group. Ten months ago, he returned to his current role at INJAZ El Djazair.
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Ph.D, Telecommunication: Intelligent Mobile Health Monintoring Systems (mHealth).
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Joseph Ajao is an entrepreneur, engineer and technologist. He is an Alumni of Silicon Valley's top technology community, Singularity University and Stanford's BASES. He co-founded Oacsoft Technologies at 17, a software company that develops low-cost software for schools, SMEs and government agencies in Nigeria and has been featured on Forbes and other technology journals. He is currently an MBA (Finance) Student at the Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University and hopes to create an African-focused venture capital firm that will invest in budding technology entrepreneurs in Africa after completing his MBA. In 2013, Joseph was awarded "Top 50 Global Entrepreneur" by the World Bank/InfoDev in South Africa.
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Aime Angelique Noela Akayezu holds a bachelor of science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Rwanda, COSTECH (formerly KIST). Her passion for empowerment led her to collaborate with different schools and organizations as a tutor. She completed entrepreneurship training in renewable energy with KIST-TBIF/EWSA. Wishing to empower the community, Noela then joined DOT Rwanda in 2012 as an intern; this gave her the opportunity to empower, exchange and learn from youth in her community. She participated in the 2013 DOT Digital Youth and Learning Unconference to share and learn about youth issues in different countries. She became a 2014 MasterCard Foundation Youth Think Tank member, conducting research on youth in the community for MasterCard Foundation youth programs. In 2013 she became an Enterprise Program Support Officer with DOT Rwanda, to empower vulnerable youth in building small projects to generate income.
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Fredrick Ouko Alucheli is the Executive Director of Action Network for the Disabled (ANDY). ANDY is a national disabled people's organization run by and for young people with disabilities. ANDY carries out capacity building and advocacy activities to ensure that young disabled people both know and demand their rights and also seeks to help improve their socio-economic status, as many of them are living in severe poverty. He also serves on the Disability Rights Fund Global Advisory Panel. Fredrick is a board member of Little Rock Inclusive Early Childhood Education Centre, an educational institution that caters for children with disabilities.
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Over 90% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Africa do not have any form of automation in their business processes. Storage, retrieval and processing are all done manually on paper. This slows down business and also prevents businesses from being able to capture the insights from their data that would enable them to make intelligent decisions. In June 2012, with a year left in college, Titus decided this was the problem he wanted to solve. He left school and has been building ffene.com, a low-cost business management platform for SMEs in the developing world, ever since.
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