The Anzisha Program is a partnership between African Leadership Academy and Mastercard Foundation that seeks to fundamentally and significantly increase the number of job generative entrepreneurs in Africa.We believe that a key to doing so is to test, implement and then share models for identifying, training and connecting high potential, very young entrepreneurs (15 to 22-year-olds) so that many more organisations have better collective success in creating a pipeline of entrepreneurs with the capabilities for scale.

Our movement is a layered approach to servicing very young entrepreneurs on the continent. We seek to use our various prizes, programs, resources and the theory of change to catalyse not only the belief in very young entrepreneurs but the creation of an ecosystem (parents, educators, policymakers and investors) that supports entrepreneurship as a viable career choice.

All our work is based on the fundamental belief that there are thousands of very young, amazing entrepreneurs across Africa. Each year, we do everything we can to identify the very best of them, so we can share their stories and inspire others.

Our Anzisha strategy has three pillars:
Collaborate: builds communities of parents and educators to create support systems that build young entrepreneurs and increase the chances of success.
>> Download the Anzisha Green paper here.
Demonstrate: develops, tests and shares best practices on how young people can be supported to become entrepreneurs, building on learnings and actionable insights from Anzisha’s work and those who share the same vision.
>> Meet the fellows, learn more about the fellowship program.
Celebrate: shares Africa’s most inspiring stories of very young entrepreneurs and the ecosystems in which they succeed to encourage young people to choose entrepreneurship and persuade the broader ecosystem to support young entrepreneurs.
>> Watch our Gala Video, read about very young entrepreneurs on our blog.

The Anzisha Advisory Board is a group of selected individuals who have helped shape the journey of the program. They are judges, educators, entrepreneurs and investors whose areas of expertise will guide the future of the Anzisha program.

Members of the Advisory Board will be announced soon.

The Mastercard Foundation seeks a world where everyone has the opportunity to learn and prosper. The Foundation’s work is guided by its mission to advance learning and promote financial inclusion for people living in poverty. One of the largest foundations in the world, it works almost exclusively in Africa. It was created in 2006 by Mastercard International and operates independently under the governance of its own Board of Directors. The Foundation is based in Toronto, Canada.

For more information and to sign up for the Foundation’s newsletter, please visit www.mastercardfdn.org. Follow the Foundation at @MastercardFdn on Twitter.

African Leadership Academy (ALA) seeks to transform Africa by developing a powerful network of entrepreneurial leaders who will work together to achieve extraordinary social impact. Each year, ALA brings together the most promising young leaders from all 54 African nations for a pre-university program in South Africa with a focus on leadership, entrepreneurship and African studies. ALA continues to cultivate these leaders throughout their lives, in university and beyond, by providing on-going leadership and entrepreneurial training and connecting them to high-impact networks of people and capital that can catalyse large-scale change.

For more information, visit africanleadershipacademy.org