(offre en anglais) Microsoft avec la collaboration de l’IACE lance un appel à participation au programme de formation SME 4Afrika durant la semaine mondiale de l’entrepreneuriat Retour vers les opportunités

Once a year, during one week each November, 160 countries around the world, through the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN), get together and jointly promote entrepreneurship by focusing on taking relevant content, events and competitions to the small businesses in those countries, with the aim of getting entrepreneurs to grow their businesses and impact positively on the relevant economies. The week also aims to inspire millions to engage in entrepreneurial activity while connecting them to potential collaborators, mentors and even investors. Powered by the Kauffman Foundation, the initiative is supported by dozens of world leaders and a network of more than 15,000 partner organizations.

We are excited to have you on board for Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) for 2016 will run from 14 – 18 November 2016. Microsoft SME4Afrika has joint efforts with a number of SME Organizations (SMEOs) across Africa to execute on content relevant to SME needs.

SMEOs are defined as organizations who are primarily focused on developing and growing SMEs. These could include incubators, accelerators, content providers, networking organizations, training providers, funding organizations or all of the aforementioned. The program is planned across fourteen countries in Africa, based on the top four needs of SMEs in the African landscape. The four needs are access to Finance, Markets, Skills & Information; and to Technology.

To assist with the roll-out of the 4Afrika vision, a number of key market development initiatives were launched over the last three years to enable the vision.

Three Biz4Afrika hubs were established, one for South Africa (www.biz4afrika.co.za), one for Kenya (www.biz4afrika.co.ke) and a generic hub focusing on the rest of Africa (wwwbiz4afrika.com). These hubs aim to provide SMEs with helpful resources, an opportunity to list their business for exposure, as well as an opportunity to make use of the freemium deals to help grow their business. Microsoft 4Afrika further bolstered the support to SMEs by creating free courses on the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA), focusing on starting growing and accelerating SMEs. Over fifty modules are available to SMEs across the three categories, covering various topics such as marketing, HR, PR, technology and the like. A link to the MVAs: www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com.

Based on the information shared above, as well as the understanding of the needs of an entrepreneur, the focus for GEW 2016 is a program specifically developed to addresses these needs as well as to inspire entrepreneurs with adequate solutions and assistance to improve their rate of success alongside the Microsoft offering.

What do we want to achieve this week?

• Increase awareness and nurture the culture of entrepreneurship.
• Developing and inspiring entrepreneurs with “real life” content based on the top needs in the Africa SME ecosystem.
• Opportunity for the entrepreneurship ecosystem to network, access local resources and build community of entrepreneurs.
• Opportunity for entrepreneurs to showcase their offerings and build partnerships.
• Opportunity to grow the engagement database via hub registrations and social media engagement during GEW.
• Provide a platform to promote the Global Entrepreneurship Congress 2017.

Where and when?

From Monday/ 14 Nov to Friday/ 18 Nov, starting at 14h00 and ending at around 17h at IACE – Bvd Principal, Rue de Lac Turkana 1053, Les Berges du Lac Tunis.

High Level program for the week

Monday :Digital Disruption

Tuesday : Productivity

Wednesday : Interacting With Others

Thursday :Marketing and PR

Friday :Finance and Knowledge Management

Daily program

The sessions are envisioned to be between 2-3 hours including a networking opportunity among entrepreneurs thereafter. The same entrepreneurs will not necessarily be present across all five days, as not all business owners are able to take extensive time away from their business. 

The first activity will be a relevant Microsoft Virtual Academy video will take between 20-30 minutes. After the screening of the video and interactive sessions, the floor will be opened for a 30-60 minutes Q&A session.