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The Social & Inclusive Business Camp 2023: An exceptional edition dedicated to the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs

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For its 7th edition, the SIBC is reinventing itself. The programme will be welcoming a cohort of 25 African women entrepreneurs in 2023, selected amongst 250 recommendations provided by 100+ partners across the continent. These social and inclusive entrepreneurs will take part in a 4-months programme dedicated to preparing the scale-up of their business. The aim of this pilot edition is to experiment with an acceleration programme tailored to an all-female African cohort, with a strong gender perspective on its educational components.

Supporting the acceleration of social and inclusive innovation on the African continent: this is the goal Agence Française de Développement set in 2017, launching the Social & Inclusive Business Camp (SIBC) programme, led by the AFD Campus.

Every year since then, SIBC has offered a cohort of English- and French-speaking African entrepreneurs support on 5 key themes for scaling up. Growing its leadership, formalising a scale-up strategy, structuring a team, measuring impact and preparing to raise funds are studied during 3 months of online training and 6 days of face-to-face bootcamp. The cohort is then invited to attend the Emerging Valley Summit on November 28th, to meet key players of the entrepreneurial ecosystems.

As well as providing training and creating funding opportunities, SIBC places at the heart of its programme a vibrant community of nearly 280 social and inclusive entrepreneurs, committed to the development of more sustainable and responsible businesses. Each cohort benefits from access to this vast network, as well as mentoring from our programme alumni.

This year, SIBC has chosen to dedicate a special edition to African women entrepreneurs, to help boost their entrepreneurial paths and address the structural barriers they face, in terms of leadership, investment readiness, team building and impact.

SIBC 2023 will also feature women entrepreneurs from the diaspora in its cohort, thanks to the support of the Meet Africa 2 programme.

An innovative support programme tailored to the needs of women entrepreneur in their growth phase

 

The SIBC programme is run by a consortium of partners - Investisseurs & Partenaires, African Management Institute (AMI), ScaleChanger and StartupBRICS. Backed by a strong teaching team and in-depth knowledge of African entrepreneurship, the consortium is responsible for developing the skills of women entrepreneurs and networking them with African entrepreneurial ecosystems. This year, the consortium is taking up the challenge of rethinking the content and methods of training to meet the specific needs of women entrepreneurs who are considering a change of scale.

The SIBC learning path :

  1. September to January: four months of virtual learning, bringing the cohort together every two weeks for live webinars and using practical resources/tools on the key topics of the programme.
  2. 22 to 28 November: a week of bootcamp in Marseille to go into more depth on the content and put learning into practice by meeting potential investors or partners during speed meetings.
  3. September to February: a mentoring programme, linking each laureate with a programme alumnus.

In addition to training courses designed to strengthen the skills and capabilities of women entrepreneurs, SIBC has historically drawn its wealth from the strength of a community that brings together a wide network of players, including :

  • An African community of more than 280 alumni, to enable entrepreneurs to be better connected to each other and to develop areas for collaboration
  • Entrepreneurs and experts who participants can meet to learn from and make key initial contacts, which could lead to a technical or financial partnership.

As a pilot version of a historic acceleration programme, the 2023 women-only edition intends to innovate in both, its content and methods. It will also provide a wealth of experience and valuable learning for the future of the SIBC, as well as for acceleration programmes for women entrepreneurs.

25 committed african women entrepreneurs

This year, 25 structures run by committed women in 15 countries across the continent make up the SIBC cohort. More than half of these women are active in the agribusiness sector, with inspiring backgrounds and strong commitments to tackling specific social and/or environmental issues. The businesses run by these women combine economic viability, a mission to make an impact and strong growth potential.

Finally, they all meet some of the 2X Challenge criteria, such as an impact on women in their value chain or the minimum percentage of women in the structure's management bodies.

You can find their profiles and those of previous winners on the SIBC website.

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