East Africa Entrepreneurs Association Unlocking Opportunities in the Global Value Chain
East Africa Entrepreneurs Association (EAEA) Is Partnering with Community Link Foundation Uganda (CLFU) To Enhance Entrepreneurship Skills Among Underprivilege Communities in EAC Region
In a meeting held at EAEA headquarters in Kampala on August/15/2024, the Director Business Development of EAEA, Mr. Tony Wamala(Right) and
the Executive Director of CLFU, Mr. Vincent Obwana(Left) agreed to mutually work towards addressing a range of socio-economic challenges faced by women/girls and youth within the East African Community, such as unemployment, food security, and digitalization.
Among the areas discussed is encourage participation of Women and Youth in STARTUP10 Project. A project which is financed by CIHEAM Bari, Italy of which EAEA is the official Incubator partner in Uganda. The aim of the project is to promote food security and youth employment in 10 partner countries of Italian cooperation (Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Kenya Uganda, Ethiopia, Albania, Bosnia,).
The Two-year project is to strengthen business incubators to foster the development of local startups active in the green and blue economy sectors with a focus on promoting youth employment, food security and digitalization.
This will be achieved through engaging selected startup companies in blue and green economies. A total of seven (7) startups will carefully be selected following a vigorous evaluation process to undergo incubator trainings, 6 months coaching by CLFU selected mentors and coaches, this will be pitched with a competition for a price of 5,000 Euros to fine tune their selected projects.
Successful startups will further undertake another 3 months mentorship program in Italy, where another pitch for a prize to scale up to address issues of venture capital, mortgage
The project will jointly be monitored by CLFU and EAEA, new learning and successes will be documented to inform research and development of a sustainability plan.
In the same development, EAEA & CLFU agreed to identify more local partners to support the project in order to reach more startups the two entities also aiming to multiply the initiative to other countries through developing a similar program for funding.
