RUFORUM Young African Entrepreneurs Competition 2018

The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) invites young african entrepreneurs to be part of the RUFORUM Young African Entrepreneurs Competition 2018. The competition aims to promote business innovation through entrepreneurship and provide seed funding to young entrepreneurs with creative and innovative business ideas to be valorized and enhance and foster a spirit of entrepreneurship among African youth.

The competition is organized to offer a great opportunity to Africa’s young entrepreneurs to create new businesses, drive and shape innovation and speed up structural changes in the economy, thereby contributing to productivity and expanding the employment base by absorbing several other young people into their enterprises. The competition provides a platform for young entrepreneurs to demonstrate their impact and creates a network of young entrepreneurs across Africa working together and sharing experiences that escalate youth contribution and job creation in Africa.

RUFORUM challenge targets african entrepreneurs aged between 16-34 from all sectors of work. Applicants may be academics, business and industry practitioners and development organizations working on entrepreneurial projects in one of the following categories:
[1] Agribusiness
[2] Natural resources
[3] Green economy
[4] Engineering
[5] Health
[6] ICTs
[7] Incubations
[8] Business entreprises
[9] Meteorology

To be eligible for the RUFORUM Young African Entrepreneurs Competition 2018, you need to meet the following eligibility criteria:
[1] Participants must be Africans in the age category of 16-34 years
[2] Participants must have an established business enterprise or innovations that can be potentially commercialized
[3] The business enterprise should have a defined business model that showcases the innovativeness of the proposed business enterprise
[4] Applications should be submitted in English or French only  

Applicants compete for 10 money prizes that are granted as seed funding. Selected winners will be invited to the RUFORUM Biennial Conference to be held between October 22-26, 2018 in Nairobi, Kenya. The RUFORUM organizing committee will cover all expenses associated with air tickets, conference registration and hotel accomodation.

About the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM):

RUFORUM is a network of 85 Universities in 35 African countries

spanning the African continent registered as an International Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) and has mandate to oversee graduate training.

RUFORUM supports universities to address the important and largely unfulfilled role that universities play in contributing to the well‐being of small‐scale farmers and economic development of countries throughout the sub‐Saharan Africa region.