SFAN, with the support of Ecobank Ghana, is organizing the first-ever Student Entrepreneurship Week Pan-Africa (SEWAfrica) from July 22 to –July 24, 2019, at the Ecobank Head Office, Accra.
The Student Entrepreneurship Week is an education forum, which was established to help budding entrepreneurs gain actionable, experiential knowledge and tools for building sustainable businesses.
SEWAfrica also serves as a platform for showcasing talents, facilitating networking and identifying funding sources for start-up businesses. The event is expected to host about 700 high potential innovators from around the continent over three days of power-packed training, thought leadership, pitching, and insightful conversations.
High growth technology entrepreneurs targeting a billion-dollar market will have the chance to pitch their businesses for funding of up to $100,000 during the 1-on-1 pitch session with Ingressive Capital, an Africa-focused venture capital fund. Ingressive Capital is sector agnostic.
This means you can have a company in Fintech, manufacturing tech, ISP, logistics, O&G tech, or health-tech as long as you’re focused on a scalable market. The Fund’s past investments include Paystack and Tizeti, who recently raised significant Series A investments, as well as AwaBike and more.
Investors like QI Holdings, an AI venture building firm are also excitedly open to investing up to $10,000 in start-ups that are the right fit for them. Partners for the event include Ingressive, QI Holdings, Movemeback, ABANAngels, 3rdfloor Digital, East Gate Hotel, and more.
Being a Pan African Banking institution, with a vision to contributing to the economic development and financial integration of Africa, Ecobank Ghana supports SFAN in its work to unlocking business potentials of young Africans for job creation.
SFAN President, Tom-Chris Emewulu says: “We’re incredibly excited to be creating the pan-African Student Entrepreneurship Week to equip young and ambitious innovators with tools they need to build successful businesses. We’re excited to partner with Ecobank, the pan-African bank, to host this brilliant event. As with SFAN events, we’re assembling some of the best and brightest speakers and trainers to spark meaningful conversations that help turn ideas into innovations.”
Startups looking to pitch to Ingressive Capital should meet the following criteria: They have launched their startup, have initial traction (i.e. money, users, etc.) and customer validation, have a clear business model, start ups should have a high growth technology business targeting a billion-dollar market. The team should be bright, hungry, and know their market better than anyone else
The team is also expected to have a competitive advantage over currently available solutions.
Applications are open to all African countries until June 30, 2019. To apply, visit www.studententrepreneurshipweek.com.