As part of efforts to showcase and promote youth innovations in enterprise development and business incubation, the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) will for the second time recognize 20 young entrepreneurs through the RUFORUM Young African Entrepreneurs 2018 Competition (RUYAEC).
The young entrepreneurs will be recognised in Nairobi Kenya during the Sixth African Higher Education Week and RUFORUM Biennial Conference scheduled for 22-26 October
“RUFORUM and stakeholders in Agricultural and Higher Education sectors recognize the transformative potential of entrepreneurship in addressing youth unemployment in Africa. As such, empowering and involving young people in enterprise development will stimulate economic growth,” says a press release.
According to the press release, there are several efforts geared towards incubation of agribusiness and entrepreneurship except that they are accorded less visibility that could easily catalyze the much needed resourcing to facilitate take-off. It is for this reason that RUFORUM has put up the RUYAEC.
The selected young entrepreneurs will each receive a recognition award, a cash price award to grow their enterprises and have opportunity to pitch their enterprises innovativeness to a global audience in attendance at the conference.
The 20 selected business enterprises will be facilitated with an all-expense paid trip (air ticket, conference registration, and hotel costs) to participate at the Conference.
The first competition which was organised in 2016, attracted a total of 756 applications from 38 countries. The 10 most competitive youth enterprises were awarded prizes during the Fifth Africa Higher Education Week and RUFORUM Biennial Conference that was held in Cape Town, South Africa.
The 2018 RUYAEC builds on the previous effort in 2016. The competition is open to a broad range of focus areas including: innovations in agribusiness, ICTs, health, engineering, natural resources, meteorology, urbanization, green economy, and transport, among others. The competition attracted 1332 youth from 46 countries, 42 in Africa.
Established by African university Vice Chancellors in 2004, RUFORUM is a consortium of 85 African universities operating in 36 countries on the continent with a vision to create “a vibrant agricultural sector linked to African universities which produce high-performing graduates and high-quality research responsive to the demands of Africa’s farmers for innovations and able to generate sustainable livelihoods and national economic development”. RUFORUM Secretariat is hosted by the Ministry of Education and Sports in Uganda with Secretariat at Makerere University in Kampala.