Archive for July 2019

By Daniel Mpala In recent years, South Africa has been rocked by a series of “Fees Must Fall” protests which has seen students across the country protest over rising tuition fees. For most South Africans, the cost of higher education is unaffordable. And for those lucky enough to afford the fees, or win a bursary…

By Daniel Mpala 24-year-old South African, Karidas Tshintsholo may have grown up in a shack —selling wire cars— but his agritech startup Khula! is now in the sights of investors. The startup’s business-to-business (B2B) marketplace helps small-scale farmers to bring their products to formal markets, by offering them cost-effective logistics services. In April, Tshintsholo, who…

By Daniel Mpala When Njabulo Mthanti, 22, registered his business last year he was keen to join the University of Pretoria’s business incubator TuksNovation as quickly as he could. Mthanthi, who runs academic funding platform Easyburse, joined the incubator early this year. “TuksNovation assisted us by providing mentorship which has helped in forming business strategies…

Tips from four young African entrepreneurs on running start-ups By Daniel Mpala Running a business, no matter how old you are, is no easy feat. As an entrepreneur not only do you have to deal with the day to day problems that come with owning a business venture — like dealing with financials, employees, and…

By Daniel Mpala Would you still pursue an innovative business idea if those in your community thought you were crazy to try? This is exactly what a young Tanzanian entrepreneur Edgar Edmund did at the age of 15 when he founded Green Venture — a company which reuses plastic waste to develop cheap and affordable building…

By Daniel Mpala Before she arrived at Kyaka II at the age of nine, former Rwandan refugee Vanessa Ishimwe had a “wonderful life”. After fleeing Rwanda with her mother, following the death of her father, the two ended up at Ugandan refugee camp where they struggling to get even one meal a day. Medication was also difficult…

By Daniel Mpala A pivot from a business-to-consumer (B2C) to a business-to-business (B2B) model helped Ugandan on-demand transport service RideLink grow its revenue says founder and head of operations Daniel Mukisa. In April, Mukisa (pictured above), 25, was awarded the Revenue Growth Growing-Phase Award by the Anzisha Prize in recognition of how he posted the greatest financial…

By Daniel Mpala African Leadership Academy (ALA) alumni, Anzisha Fellows and individuals who have participated in any of ALA’s programmes are set to benefit from a $500 000 Young Entrepreneurs Fund. The rules-based matching fund, which was announced on 15 April at the Very Young Entrepreneur Education & Acceleration Summit in Johannesburg, is a partnership…