Campaign: “Towards one million start-ups and $100 billion in revenues”
Introduction
The Second Forum of the Alliance of Entrepreneurial Universities in Africa 10-11 October 2023 and the Workshop on STI4SDGs Roadmaps and Actions in Africa, October 12-13, 2023, will be held at UNCC, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The theme of the Forum is Advancing Entrepreneurship through Education with a special focus on “Towards one million start-ups and $100 billion in revenues in a decade”.
The first Forum of the Alliance of Entrepreneurial Universities was held in December 2022 and looked at Promoting Entrepreneurship through Education for a Stronger Recovery. The second Forum will explore actions, mechanisms, policies and strategies needed to empower African universities to inspire their communities of researchers, students and other staff to generate one million startups and $100 billion in revenues.
The university community in Africa has over 15 million students and about one million lectures and researchers supported by another one million administrative and technical staff. Therefore, it is a large fast-growing population of increasingly educated and globally-engaged people in the prime of their lives.
To achieve this ambitious goal, embracing entrepreneurship should not left to a few university cases but rather by the wider higher education sector. It also requires a transformation of university internal and external processes to stimulate and support the entrepreneurship mission, similar to those that support teaching and research missions.
The Theme of the Forum
The main theme is to encourage and support universities to put in place institutional arrangement that enable universities to promote “Entrepreneurship through Education” with a target of creating at least “one million startups and $100 billion in revenues in a decade”.
Objectives of the Forum
The overall objective of the Forum is to encourage universities to promote, nurture and drive entrepreneurship and business development in teaching, research and outreach. Specifically, the Forum will seek to showcase and generate alternative ways to:
- Advance the institutionalization of entrepreneurship in internal processes of the universities to ensure it is widely diffused into the university community.
- Recommend organizational structures and policies within the institutions for innovation promotion
- Broaden and enhance teaching and learning of entrepreneurship including curriculum designs
- Find ways of expanding external engagements and linkages that are sustainable, reliable and long-term.
- Bring public and private sector challenges and opportunities on the university agenda to find immediate and future solutions.
- Showcase excellence in promotion of entrepreneurship and stimulate the strategic partnerships with industry and government to address new and emerging challenges
- Build innovation and entrepreneurship support ecosystems internally and externally to meet national, regional and global development aspirations. This includes interlinking the various components or partners of the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem including vocational colleges.
Structure of the Forum
The forum will include Keynote addresses that bring both African and regional perspectives; policy dialogues and discussions by university, industry and government leaders on driving broad-based partnerships and ecosystems; and exhibitions, demonstrations and showcasing of technologies, enterprises and unique business models developed by student, researchers and teams linked to universities.
Format
The Forum will offer both physical and virtual participation (hybrid format).
Participants
The Forum is open to all member States of the United Nations and members of the Alliance of Entrepreneurial Universities (AEU) in Africa and beyond.
Venue
Conference Room 6, United Nations Conference Centre, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Please click here for the event Concept Note
Publication: Advancing entrepreneurial universities in Africa Ethiopia, Ghana and South Africa
Contacts:
Asfaw Yitna at yitna@un.org and Gedion Workneh at workneh@un.org