Hyacinth decided to be an entrepreneur because he thinks entrepreneurship provides the feeling of having the license to discover and solve problems. This mindset has greatly motivated him to look at problems from the standpoint of creating a solution that solves it. As the founder and team lead of Quick Waka he has encountered problems that his business provides solutions for, and this has validated the importance of his choice of being an entrepreneur.”

The growing population in Nigeria has also presented some opportunities for product marketing even in areas with peculiar commuting challenges. Logistics has been one of the limitations of effective online marketing in highly populated locations in Nigeria. So, Order fulfillments are mostly outsourced to a third-party fulfillment company whenever possible for increased efficiency.

“We registered over 350 vendors with us and 4000 users that daily uses our platform to buy and sell. So, a lot of persons were able to sell their products from their homes while we picked up the products and delivered it to doorstep of the customer that placed the order. The ministry of business development in Ebonyi state gave us special recognition for our service during the pandemic.”

Quick Waka is solving the problem of inconvenience for online shoppers by delivering orders, shopping from local vendors, and connecting them to Local vendors within their location. Quick Waka platform is designed in such a way that vendors do not need to own smartphones or have access to the internet to sell their products. The team uploads their products online and when a customer orders it, their logistic team assigns a dispatch officer to pick up the product from the vendor and deliver it to the customer’s doorstep.

In 3 years after being funded by the Tony Elumelu foundation, Quick Waka has 450 registered vendors with over 6000 users. They currently have 13 dispatch outlets, and they have raised about $50,000 in revenue since its inception. They are currently at the stage of launching and expanding Their services to 5 other states before December 2022. The cities have been mapped out and plans have already kicked off.

Hyacinth has gained extensive knowledge on business management through the training she got on the programme

“TEF gave me the best entry opportunity into the entrepreneurship space- My biggest catch was not only the $5000, the 12 weeks training was the changer for me. It gave me a strong foundation in business. I call it a mini–MBA Today I can write a standard business plan, business report, financial projections and more. As a matter of fact, I have mentored several entrepreneurs online and on-site to
become TEF entrepreneurs.”One of the things that stood out for Hyacinthe was having access to a seasoned mentor. The mentor that was assigned to him during the training did not stop at the conclusion of the 12 weeks, he has also guided him through several business decisions. Today he is not just a TEF alumni, he is an idea development coach and business strategist cum entrepreneur.

“The best thing that happened to me in 2018 was to have been selected as a TEF entrepreneur.”

The post Meet Hyacinth, 2018 TEF ALUMNI Who got Funding in the Commercial/Retail Sector appeared first on The Tony Elumelu Foundation.

The importance of education became more apparent to Angele Messa in 2018, following a crisis in Cameroon that led to closure of schools in two English speaking regions in her country. This first-hand experience motivated her to create EduClick Africa to promote access to quality education and decent job opportunities.

Angele’s business model helps train and mentor individuals to realise their true potential, through her online platform, EduClick Africa, and facilitate job access through her job search engine educlickcareers.com, which currently ranks as the largest job search engine in Cameroon.

Following the non-refundable seed grant of $5,000 from the Foundation, Angele was able to build her online learning platform. She has also been able to grow her business to employ 3 full time staff and 4 part time.

EduClick Jobs, a subsidiary of EduClick Africa, is a search engine which seeks to connect Cameroonian youth to decent jobs and other opportunities to boost their productivity and help them support their families and achieve their life goals.

Through her business, Angele has a vision to democratise access to decent jobs for all, irrespective of geographical location, qualifications, and gender. She has a goal to help 1 million youths access decent jobs and opportunities through EduClick Careers by 2025.

Speaking on the impact of her business since its inception, Angele said “We have over 46,000 registered users on our platforms. We have impacted over 8,000 young people within Cameroon and the Central African region with employability skills and helped over 600 people to find decent jobs”.

When asked about the impact of the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme on the current trajectory of her business, Angele emphasised that thanks to the six weeks business management training, she was able to develop a comprehensive business plan, set realistic business goals and working hard to achieve them following her learnings from trainings.

The post Angele, 2018 TEF Alumna, created Cameroon’s largest job search engine appeared first on The Tony Elumelu Foundation.

Michel realised very quickly as he grew up that these stories he was told by his parents and grandparents were not available in a lot of books or made into comics and even less in animated version for young children and future generations. Recognising the power of storytelling and the need to preserve Africa’s rich cultural heritage in formats that are relatable and exciting, Michel set out to create Noohkema Game Studios.

The goal for the Cameroonian based company is to utilise video games and interactive media as the best and most effect medium of changing global perceptions of Africa while preserving its cultural identity for the next generations. They are able to achieve this through a range of services that include 3D Visualization and prototyping, Edugames, Immersive Real-time architectural visualisation, Realtime Renderings, 3D Animation, Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, Strategy and Design.

Working together with architects, property developers, interior designers, product developers, construction companies, selling agents, advertising agencies and artists, Noohkema Game Studios can effectively illustrate design concepts and brings them to life.

Michel is creating aesthetic African themed games to a global audience through high-quality games with amazing and engaging mechanics.

One of his latest games, Afro Warriors: Battle for Power, has a rating of 4.8 stars on the renowned Google Play platform. It’s heavily inspired by the Africa’s rich history, culture, and mythology. The game features a combination of 2D fighting and full 3D graphics and simplified Swipe+4 button controls with fast-paced gameplay. It has over 500,000 downloads with positive comments and remarks by its players from across the world.

Michel employs innovative strategy, design, and technology as fuel for his storytelling engine and is taking the legendary stories originating from Cameroon and other parts of Africa to different parts of the world.

The post Michel Is Driving Africa’s Narrative Through Video Games appeared first on The Tony Elumelu Foundation.

I started up Teebah Film Village in July 2017 and since that time, I have been struggling mainly with how to increase sales, and how to improve our product.

At some point, I came to learn about the Tony Elumelu Foundation and spent around 5 weeks composing my application form because I was not happy with the results I was getting. I needed to win because by the time I was applying the business was making a loss and almost closing at 7 months.

Luckily, by 22^nd March 2018, the list went out and I was selected. I could not believe that I was selected in a thousand among 151,000 Africans.

Here is my journey with TEF in 5 stages:

Stage 1: Application form

By answering all the questions from the application forms, I understood my business better. I understood my market potential, I composed my Elevator Pitch. I got to perfect my problem solving; in general, the main reward for me was to understand my business through the application process.

Stage 2: The Selection

After being selected, I got the chance to talk about my business through the media.

Tony Elumelu Foundation has connected me to new and competent networks of entrepreneurs and decision makers. TEF has displayed my creative capacity and today my customers have a strong confidence in our company, Teebah Film Village, whose mission is to drive impact through local stories.

Stage 3: Training

TEF has a great curriculum that we consider to be an MBA and going through it has strengthened my entrepreneurial journey forever. TEF Training is a life-changing game. By doing surveys, I got the answers to many problems that I had no clue about; I overcame the challenges I was facing such as pricing and social media marketing.

At the end of the training program, I made a business plan with an action plan of 10 years

In my business Plan, I also composed the milestones which are a table that contains activities and budget for 2 years divided into 8 quarters

Stage 4: Seed Capital

By the end of November 2018, I received $5000 in my bank account. This helped me to rent a better office, buy film equipment and invest in promotional tools.

Stage5: Networking

Being part of the TEF network is the best platform for any entrepreneur. We do businesses together from different countries and advise one another through online conferences.

The Future of Teebah Film Village

Teebah Film Village envisions becoming Africa’s leading Multimedia enterprise which portrays local stories to drive impact and change the lives of the community. With a strong partner ecosystem which we created; we also currently employ 13 people.  

If we are making progress and impact in Rwanda, it is because I am a Tony Elumelu Entrepreneur. Currently, we are producing a web series called UBWUNGO, a peace and love Drama Series that you can watch on YouTube.

I highly thank Tony Elumelu Foundation for this amazing opportunity, I also encourage every entrepreneur and whoever wants to connect with business minds to log in at www.tefconnect.net

The post Emmanuel Nturanyenabo’s TEF Testimonial appeared first on The Tony Elumelu Foundation.

As a young man born and raised into a family of small-scale agricultural commodity producers, he had firsthand experience of the ordeals endured by low- and middle-income earners in Cameroon, all of whom struggle to access urban markets in the continent amidst the deplorable state of farm to market roads and fragile commodity supply chains especially in the agriculture sector.

But in 2017, three years after his degree in Journalism and Mass Communications and armed with substantial work experience in Communications, Social Enterprise and Project Management functions, Che Azenyui began asking himself deeper questions as to how he would leverage his academic training, professional background and deep passion for technology to proffer solutions to some of daily challenges threatening Africa’s long term food security.

In January 2018, it became clear to him that with digital innovations, he could use the growing influence of technology to boost local production and local consumption of agricultural products in Africa. His first step was to come up with a business plan to the best of his ability and then mobilize resources to bring the dream alive. It was then he encountered the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme in 2019, which led to the startup that is today known as Digifarms Africa.

Beyond the seed funding he received from the programme, the Startup Enterprise toolkit provided an ideal platform for learning growth and expansion for Digifarms Africa. Among other things, it taught Che Azenyui resilience, record keeping and financial reporting, enterprise communications and business forecasting. One of his biggest lessons is in the importance of long-term planning as an enterprise, even as Digifarms navigates through challenges and successes.

With a database of more than 500 local commodity producers in Cameroon across aspects like commodity value addition, farm optimization, packaging, branding and marketing, farmers sell their farm produce from the comfort of their farms. Some have witnessed a sharp decline in post-harvest crop loss just by connecting with buyers via Marketplace, Digifarms’ online sales platform.

Since the launch of Digifarms Africa, Chi’s pride in seeing Cameroonian commodity consumers consuming Cameroonian products has been unmatched. He has successfully pulled together commodity producers and Consumers in Cameroon into one big trading community referred to as the Digifarms Community. This has greatly cut down the comparative cost of product acquisition, reduced up to 70% of the amount of time spent on acquiring agricultural products and provided easier market access for small-scale farmers in Cameroon.

DigiFarms is now one of the major distributors of locally grown rice (Ndop Rice) in the South West Region of Cameroon – an achievement that has significantly downsized dependence on imported rice in the SW Region of Cameroon. His vision to make Digifarms Africa an agri-commodity one-stop-shop for every African citizen has found him in search of partnerships with manufacturers, angel investors, wholesalers and even traders all over the continent, just to ensure that food security, revenue generation and job creation remains evergreen and ever fresh.

The post Agri-Startup Digifarms Africa Tackles Food Security in Cameroon appeared first on The Tony Elumelu Foundation.

Still so young, she got engaged in scouting, which further inspired her desire to foster community-driven work. She challenged himself with tasks that were in service of the community. While being involved, she experienced firsthand the practice of entrepreneurship, being a part of the Scouting African Region through the Fifth World Center Pilot Project: ‘Developing Entrepreneurs of Leadership Throughout Africa’ in Lagos.

This project further inspired an even stronger sense of commitment to the social and economic issues her community faced, and intimately awakened specific interests in the world of business. Since then, she has frequently invested all personal resources in organising people to work together to assist others – especially women, young girls and physically challenged touched by various hardships, conflict and misfortune. This decision came equally with the desire to promote income-generating activities and strengthen the capacities of its members in different areas of activity, from sewing, masonry, handicrafts, and carpentry.

Around the world, people with disability face several challenges. In the Central African Republic, Kobozo’s organization is trying to solve the socio-economic barriers that further marginalize people living with disabilities. They offer basic education and teach certain skill sets with the expected outcome that their efforts will translate to marginalized people in the Central African Republic becoming more economically independent and are able to sustain themselves using the education and skills acquired from being empowered.

To create awareness, Kobozo uses radio, television, newspaper, social platforms on the internet and a user-friendly website; while it generates revenue from the sale of finished products, clothes fashion items and accessories produced. The social enterprise’s most significant achievement so far is the recognition from the Ministry of SMEs in Central African Republic as an NGO – giving them the opportunity to continue to drive impact. A major concern at the “WA NZIN A GA ZO” is that different people in the world tend to separate physically handicapped people from their societies. Physically challenged people, in the Central African Republic especially those at the bottom of the pyramid have been denied jobs in corporate, and several other opportunities. As such, they are unable to support their living.

In a society where physically handicapped people are not considered valuable and are not given opportunities to contribute to their community through work or other valuable activities, “WA NZIN A GA ZO”, provides a good quality dress catalogue and custom-designed baskets. The organisation creates impact by empowering the physically challenged to building a life of their own and becoming active participants within their society. It trains and connects them to paid work, offers basic education, teaches skill sets and providing business tools that create independence.

Even through the COVID-19 pandemic, WA NZIN A GA ZO continued to support the physically challenged by raising awareness about preventive measures among people living with disabilities in the eastern region bordering the Republic of Cameroon – a country heavily affected by this pandemic. They worked with unemployed and destitute young people, as well as street children, to avoid the spread of COVID-19. They also provided a means to facilitate the circulation and access to at-risk households, such as nose covers, gloves and handwashing kits.

For Kobozo, the mission is simple: how does our society evolve if it does not foster acceptance. It was the central question that led to the birth of one of Kenya’s social enterprises, with a focus on providing humanitarian aid to vulnerable people; raising awareness among the population on citizenship, peace, social cohesion and living together; fighting against gender-based violence, STI/AIDS and other pandemic diseases.

As a social entrepreneur, she is deeply concerned about maintaining sustainability. Recently, she joined the WEDO (Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Organization) organisation as Ambassador for the Central African Republic. In December 2020, she successfully organised an event with young women, and interacted with UN Women CAR. She hopes to join the community of the World Fair Trade Organization (Africa) based in Nairobi, with the expectation to expand her organization’s operations and have a bigger impact on her targets. The set-challenge is to have enough space where physically challenged people can convene around the basketry and sewing activities.

Kobozo continues to generate economic activities within the physically challenged people ecosystem. She is bridging the gap between the physically challenged people in the Central African Republic, helping them become integrated into mainstream society, giving them a sense of belonging and active citizenry. Though her organisation is not generating revenue, Kobozo’s truest benefit is in creating a space where everyone is recognized and given the purest form of dignity to live meaningful lives.

The post How Mauricette Kobozo Yadibert is Driving Inclusivity in the Central African Republic appeared first on The Tony Elumelu Foundation.

Since 2014, so much has changed both in how news is developed and how it is consumed. Manifexto’s latest achievement is perhaps the most significant. In March 2021, they successfully launched an automated fact-checker, Nuxo, based on a machine-learning algorithm. For now, it is only working as a chatbot on Facebook, which allows any of its almost 7 billion users to ask Nuxo about the news. Any day, any time, Nuxo will always reply and analyze news in any language, and for free! How remarkable it is that more people have access to around-the-clock news in a manner that is most comfortable for them.

Manifexto is contributing to local communities in Angola by empowering them with information, transforming them into educated concerned citizens. On the other hand, we are also contributing by showing the next generation of entrepreneurs that whatever is their goal, they can achieve if they set their priorities straight.

As media around the world continues to be reshaped, Manifesto wants to constantly remain innovative in the media landscape, but more importantly, they want to continue developing Nuxo and strengthen its linguistics abilities. At a time where Artificial Intelligence is increasingly receiving attention, Manifexto is eager to use it as a service that can be personalized to serve any purpose that would benefit from its wonders.

Although operating with a lean business structure, they continue to find new ways to diversify their portfolio, chasing new opportunities and possibilities to put the people of Angola at the forefront of all that is happening within and outside their communities.

The post Zedilson Almeida: Fact Checking Fake News appeared first on The Tony Elumelu Foundation.

In Africa, green entrepreneurship is gaining significant traction, with more and more young African entrepreneurs seeking innovative ways to solve immediate environmental challenges, while making profits.  

Here a few entrepreneurs who are redefining eco-entrepreneurship in their countries: 

Msindazwe Ndhlovu, The Noble Savage, Zimbabwe

With rising urbanisation, more people are migrating to cities triggering increased demand for affordable housing in many African countries. 

Botswanan entrepreneur Msindazwe Ndhlovu founded The Noble Savage, a company that recycles waste plastic and waste glass to manufacture alternative eco-friendly building materials which are lighter, stronger, durable, and affordable.  

The company makes roofing tiles, and other material by utilising mixed post-consumer waste plastic and blending it with sand to create a polymer resin bonded product that is eco-friendly, stronger and cheaper compared to other products. The collected waste includes beer bottles and all sorts of glass blended with concrete resin and wood to create alternatives to granite, marble and ceaser stone. 

Msindazwe Ndhlovu says: “For centuries roofing has been made from materials that were extracted from the earth cement, clay steel or grass. But we have improved and used waste plastic to generate a far superior product that is lighter, stronger, and affordable up to 30% cheaper.”  Msindazwe Ndhlovu is a beneficiary of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme.

Lombola Lombola, Bamboo Express, Malawi 

Bamboo express is a company that makes furniture from ecofriendly bamboo. 

Lombola Lombola started the company to empower the youth and women locally. 
Bamboo Express is solving the problem of deforestation, youth unemployment, and lack of income alternatives for rural women. They run a youth apprenticeship program and purchase 90% of raw materials from rural women. 
Lombola Lombola is a beneficiary of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme.

Adebimpe Oni, D’Rose Recycling, Nigeria 

D’Rose recycling is an eco-friendly company that upcycles solid waste like old tyres, bottles, plastics into recycled furniture suitable for homes, offices, playgrounds, studios, etc. 

Adebimpe Oni’s company seeks to address the challenge posed by the tons of plastics and tyres which end up in the ocean on a yearly basis causing water pollution and which drive sea life into extinction. 

Founder, Adebimpe said: “I have a great passion for combating climate change in the world. I decided to add my own quota in creating a better and cleaner environment”. 
Adebimpe Oni is a beneficiary of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme.

Richard Bbaale, BanaPads, Uganda

TEF entrepreneur, Richard Bbaale is a social entrepreneur from Uganda that founded BanaPads in 2010, a company using banana pseudostem wastes, which are usually left to rot after harvesting, to make sanitary towels. 

BanaPads is an award winning social enterprise registered in Uganda and Tanzania with the aim of manufacturing affordable and eco-friendly (100% biodegradable) sanitary pads to keep village girls in school and create jobs for local women. 

Richard Bbaale says: “This is actually a very personal story that involves me and my elder sister. I always looked up to her and we were very close. As we grew older, I realized that she would skip school for a number of days every month. I also noticed that she would use leaves to try and keep herself clean during this time because our grandmother could not afford to buy sanitary pads that were available on market. And because it’s taboo, they would not talk about it and she would miss a lot of school and get infections as well. This haunted me and I felt helpless seeing my sister stay at home when she should have been in school. 

Fast-forward, I am in college, while volunteering in local community I noticed similar problem with young women having to just stay at home when they had their period. Once when visiting a village, there were a number of discarded banana stems scattered around. And that is where it struck me that this ‘waste product’ could actually be used to make useful products. I learnt about its properties and realized it had very good absorption qualities to make a low-cost disposable sanitary pad.” 

The pads are also collected to be used as manure and this means that the waste that goes to the local landfill will be reduced since the banana pseudo-stem is a recyclable product. 
Richard Bbaale is a beneficiary of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme.

Letsogile Kennedy, Ecohub, Botswana

Letsogile Kennedy is an award-winning social entrepreneur, architect and founder of Ecohub, a startup established that innovatively uses plastic waste to produce affordable, architect-designed flat-pack ecobricks and ecohouses. 

EcoHub is a local startup company that makes eco-bricks from recycled materials. The plan is to manufacture ‘green’ building materials from waste, while at the same time providing affordable housing and sustainable housing that can last for 20 to 25 years. 

The company manufactures eco-bricks that are produced from special material using waste. 
Letsogile Kennedy is a beneficiary of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme

The post 5 Young African Entrepreneurs Growing Eco-friendly Businesses on the Continent appeared first on The Tony Elumelu Foundation.

Influenced by the living conditions of the people in his immediate environment, Lino Munionio has always longed to improve the lives of the citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Growing up in a town called Kalemie and being the youngest of four children, he got involved in numerous activities which included writing stories to inspire little children when he was 15 years old, joining a sensitization team for the fight against poliomyelitis and AIDs encouraged by his  late Dr Leonard Munionio and staging an end of the year closing play in his sixth grade that focused on the theme of negligence to medical care, arts and computer science.

After this experience, Munionio became fascinated with computers as a means to create solutions to the problems in his community but unfortunately, he did not have the opportunity to acquire the necessary skills because at the time his community was caught in war between rebels in the area. This resulted in the cutting of internet access in his community between 2003 and 2009.

The Birth of New Ideas

A while later, he moved to Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC where he his vision began to take proper form. Burying himself in research, he sought to understand the African continent in more detail specifically searching for reasons the lack of speedy development in his country.

This immersive process created a whirlpool of ideas within Munionio which were directly targeted at helping young people maximise their potential. In 2013, he conceived the idea to create a magazine targeted at enlightening young people on a variety of subjects but lacked the time to bring it to life because of his studies. That same year, he came across an entrepreneurship contest organised by a telecom company called Tigo in partnership with Reach For Change.

For the contest he designed a website that provided access to comprehensive education for children in war-torn areas and he made it to the semi-finals. However, he had to withdraw his participation because the final rounds required a full-time commitment and he was still studying at the time.

2014 came and he finally created the magazine which was named KaribuEvent with the support of an acquittance. Unfortunately, the magazine’s life span was cut short due to funding and structural challenges. From this point, Munionio kept looking for new ways—the creation of a mobile application that functioned as helpline for youths, starting an event to educate young people, Karibu Fashion Week—to impact the youth in his nation but with the absence of funds, proper management and business knowledge he could not get any of these projects to thrive.

These setbacks discouraged him for a while and the loss of his father in that same period temporarily affected his drive towards his dreams. However, he didn’t give up on his dreams and this eventually led him to discover The Tony Elumelu Foundation.

Building Deka Innova

By learning from his past mistakes and using the knowledge and resources he acquired from the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme, Lino Munionio created his company Deka Innova.

Deka Innova is a web and mobile based digital platform that provides business solutions to young people in various sectors. They achieve via a rich database that contains comprehensive documentations surrounding societal problems particularly within the DRC.

As a company, they specifically target local Start-ups, SMEs and young unemployed individuals who do not have access to the insights and tools that they need to succeed within their immediate communities.

Being an innovator at heart, Munionio has already begun to spring up other arms of his business to target specific needs in his community. One of such platforms is Deal Business, a platform that would support physical training workshops.

Other ideas include Afrodiziak Music, Afriq’Art Fashion and Educci Project which target the music, fashion and education sectors respectively.

Currently they are a team of six people, five of which computer scientists who develop these different digital products.

Deka Innova’s major goal is to be known as one of the major companies that promote the growth of young businesses in Africa opens Africa economically to the world.

For Munionio, his challenges include obtaining documents from companies, seeking funding to develop other products for the business and sustaining a digital workspace particularly with his internet connectivity issues.

Nonetheless, he continues to strengthen his resolve and strengthen his team to face these challenges head on.

The Future of Deka Innova

Lino Munionio’s plans immediate plans for expansion focus on heavy marketing to make his products accessible to a wider audience—both in Africa and globally. This goal also includes searching for media partners at a national and international level and direct collaborations with SMEs for strategic partnerships.

Others plans include creating bilingual and multilingual platforms to break language barriers and to facilitate partnerships between companies and entrepreneurs across Africa.

The TEF Entrepreneurship Programme

For a long time, Munionio never trusted youth entrepreneurship programs, however, the Tony Elumelu Foundation Programme changed his way of thinking.

Through the TEF Programme, he gained a proper understanding of how to truly run a business. Prior to this time, he had brilliant ideas but wasn’t armed with the skills he needed to excuse them.

Over the course of the 12-week programme, he learnt that ideas are nothing with proper planning, organisation and leadership. Additionally, the seed capital gave his business the financial capacity required to execute his ideas.

He also considers being appointed as a Tony Elumelu Foundation Hub Lead as a major milestone.

For those who want to reach Lino Munionio, he is available on the following platforms.

Facebook: Lino Architect MUNIONIO

Email: dealbusiness_afriq@gmail.com, linomar.munio@gmail.com, dekainnova@gmail.com

The post Lino Munionio: Thriving In The Face Of Adversity appeared first on The Tony Elumelu Foundation.

Factional fighting between the government and its opponents remains a drag on economic revitalization in countries across the world, Central African Republic is not left behind in this as crisis across the country has been longterm and characterised by sporadic surges of violence against a backdrop of state disintegration, a survival economy and deep inter-ethnic cleavages. However, these has not stopped entrepreneurs across the country from driving strategic development in various sector.

One of the entrepreneurs making giant strides in the country is Philippe Junior Sibiro. In 2011, Philippe made an observation of the lack of depth and activities in the digital space in Central African Republic especially the development of applications web and mobile. In relation to this, he launched SPJ Labs a small 80% digital company., but it is in 2014 that several free and downloadable services were put online, and new services will be available in 2017.

SPJ specializes in application development (web and mobile), content local internet, social networking pages and as well providing professional development of applications, local internet content, social networking pages to customers based on request and giving access to the different templates of their applications to their choice in relation to the specifications.

With great improvement in communication and marketing activities of SPJ over the past year which he says he owes to his learning from the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme, Philpppe is on the right track to make SPJ Labs the leading manufacturer of digital services and products specializing in application development, local internet content, incubation services, green solutions and coaching in Central African Republic.

Recognising the need to carry others along and impact his community which has suffered greatly from the crisis,  Philippe and his team have also extended knowledge and his services to his immediate community by offering free training for youth on the use of information technology

Through SPJ, Philippe has also found a way to extend his entrepreneurial passion to other key sectors in CAR starting up Ecology, a product of SPJ Labs with interests in Agro-forestry and Recycling. Through Ecology, SPJ has acquired half a hectare of plantation of teaks (furniture) and in recycling – developed a small unit of processing handicraft: production of bags, clothes, carpets plastic object that have been put on the market.

The journey for Philippe does not stop with his country as he is poised to growing SPJ to a power house in the Central African region and indeed across Africa

To learn more about SPJ visit http://www.spjlabs.cf and contact via email: contact@spjlabs.cf

The post Philippe is Creating Impact Beyond Adversary through SPJ appeared first on The Tony Elumelu Foundation.