Top Changemakers on the Continent and Guess What…They’re Part of Ye!
17 June 2019

Top Changemakers on the Continent and Guess What…They’re Part of Ye!

Youth entrepreneurs are changing the economic climate on the continent; they are innovating, advancing, and growing the potential of their fellow peers. This week, Ye! is in South Africa for CYFI’s Global Summit in Johannesburg. To celebrate the amazing youth entrepreneurs on the Continent, we highlight some exceptional young entrepreneurs in the Ye! Community. Don’t be caught sleeping! Keep your eyes on these changemakers.

Dr. Agbor Ashumanyi Ako is a young Cameroonian Medical Doctor with a mission to use low-cost technologies to save lives. He is a community medicine expert with commendable expertise in project management, impact monitoring and evaluation, leadership, health content development and event organization. I mean… what doesn’t he do?

As Co-founder and Medical Director of GiftedMom, he has received several awards and recognitions for his work with GiftedMom – the most recent being the Oslo Business for Peace Award. Based on his experiences in the mobile health, Dr. Agbor has acted as a consultant for mobile health solutions for UNFPA, World Bank, the French Embassy in Gabon and many Non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Read more about Agbor here.

Amira El Gharib co-founded Orcas, Egypt’s first babysitting and tutoring agency offering high-quality educational and childcare services throughout Greater Cairo. She joined Orcas in 2014 and began her journey in building a company that aims to provide employment opportunities to youth. She studies Business Administration in Misr University for Science and Technology, and believes that the key to any start-up success is consistency and adaptability to changes.

In 2018 she won the Ye! Youth Entrepreneurship Awards – Egypt for the Superstar Category (youth-led enterprises with revenues greater than 100,000 USD). Since then her enterprise has gained an increasing number of supporters and has just secured a second round of capital investment. Read about her win in Egypt here.

Read more about Amira here.

Rania Ayman founded Entreprenelle, a mission-driven enterprise that strives to bridge the gender gap economically by educating, training and linking women to all the resources available to support their economic empowerment. She is a Global Shaper, Injaz Alumni and a CEFP Alumni. She has more than 4 years’ experience in marketing and holds a degree in Business Administration. Some of her interests are entrepreneurship, women’s rights and civic work.

Rania was also a finalist at the Ye! Awards Egypt in the Rising Star category – for youth-led enterprises with less than 100,000 USD in annual turnover. She wowed the judges with her business model and mandate to support young women in Egypt to become entrepreneurs. For this she was given a special recognition as the Ye! Female Youth Entrepreneur. Read more about it here.

Read more about Rania here.

Brian has a particular commitment to the challenges faced by the local smallholder farmer and works to create, develop and adapt products and services that are affordable as well as best suited to their needs. He holds a degree in Economics and Statistics, and co-funded Illuminum Greenhouses, an agri-tech start up in Kenya. His work has been recognized for its simple, yet sustainable model and for the immense support this low-cost technology can have on small-holder farmers. Read more here.

Read more about Brian here.

Olanrewaju Adeloye is a social innovator passionate about maternal and newborn health. He is also the CEO & Co-founder of Babymigo, an innovative startup which connects mothers to experts, local mothers and verified child care services in order to make informed health decisions. He is winner of 2016 Facebook African Innovation Challenge, St Galen Leader of Tomorrow, TEEP fellow,  Leap Africa Social Innovator fellow, and most importantly, he is the recipient of Queen Elizabeth II of England Young Leader’s Award. Read more about it here.

Read more about Olanrewaju here.

Benjamin Constable is a professional basketball player from New Zealand and the current CEO of FreshBox –  a South African non-profit company focused on sustainably increasing access to healthy food for nutritionally at-risk children, by selling “FreshBox Subscriptions” – weekly supplies of quality fruit and vegetables, retailed via an e-commerce platform - and using the proceeds to send bulk produce to nutritionally at-risk children. Benjamin comes from a science background, holding a first-class honors degree in Physics. After serving for two years as an international fellow for PeacePlayers International South Africa – an NGO that uplifts youth through sport – Benjamin saw the need for more effective, sustainable and scalable solutions for global issues such as malnutrition. This led him to design and implement FreshBox, an online service offering fresh fruit and vegetables at low prices.

Read more about Benjamin here.

Edgar Edmund is the founder of GreenVenture. Through seeing how the rains and floods destroyed houses in his country and due to weak construction – poor foundation and poor materials, Edgar was inspired to solve this problem by turning adversity into opportunity: GreenVenture recycles plastic waste into cheap and affordable building products such as paving blocks. The venture aims to help people to build houses but also helps to promote environmental sustainability. Edgar is the winner of the Children’s Climate Prize 2017 and recognized as Forbes Africa Disrupters of 2030.

Edgar Edmund was also the Youth Economic Citizen Award winner at CYFI’s 2018 Global Inclusion Awards in Rhiyad, Saudi Arabia. You can read about it here.

Read more about Edgar here.

Alisha Ali is a social entrepreneur, and the Founder of I Profile Foundation – an enterprise that focuses on child empowerment programs with emphasis on leadership, financial literacy and entrepreneurship. She is passionate about children, and she envisions a generation of leaders that are financially literate adults.

She is a longtime supporter of CYFI’s initiative Global Money Week and has participated in organizing events for the past 3 years. Furthermore, she has recently taken over as the Ye! Ambassador for Uganda alongside another youth entrepreneur, where she will continue to organize events and activities which support the economic empowerment and financial literacy of her fellow youth entrepreneurs. You can read more about it here.

Read more about Alisha here.

Gilbert is a preacher, university lecturer and an entrepreneur. He holds a degree in Computer Science, and in 2016 he launched eMsika – an e-commerce store for farmers, listing over 300 different products in 10 different categories of agricultural input, enabling them to save half their expenses and time (no more travelling long distances, or exposure to accidents and theft).

He has been written about extensively for his work to support small-holder farmers and provide increased access to resources using the internet as a tool to reach rural populations. Read more about him here and here!

Gilbert is the Ye! Ambassador for Zambia and is working to educate the next generation of youth entrepreneurs.

Read more about Gilbert here.

Kumbulani Masayila is a youth and small enterprise advocate, working at the nexus of impact investing, promoting trade, and entrepreneurship. He is an alumnus of Stanford Graduate School of Business, USA. He is the Founder and Director of Uplifting Investments (Upvest) Group, a holding company interested in businesses, technologies, and initiatives that create economic opportunities, employment, and positive impact for people at the base of the economic pyramid. In 2019 Kumbulani has been named a Changemaker by the African Leadership Institute (AFLI).

Read more about Upvest here.

These young entrepreneurs are making change and we're sure you are too! By joining the Ye! Community you join a network of young people who are working to support one another and build stronger ecosystems.

Create a profile today and begin connecting. Using the Ye! website you can message these guys and everyone else directly for info and insights. Get to connecting!

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