Written by yher Africa Regional Director, Katleho Tsoku, as part of the yher Africa Newsletter. Sign up for more content like this.

Happy Africa Month!

On May 25th, the continent of Africa celebrates the 58th anniversary of what is now known as Africa Day (formerly Africa Unity Day). Africa Day celebrates “the determination of the People of Africa to free themselves from foreign domination and exploitation.”

The legacy of colonialism has resulted in deeply entrenched psychological, economic and social damage. Furthermore, the current leadership in many African countries continues to fail us, derailing development through corruption and greed. …

By ygap Kenya Impact Officer, Periz Odhiambo

In February and March, ygap Kenya held a series of regional Sustainable Social Impact Hackathons for early stage social impact entrepreneurs in two regional hubs — Busia on the far west Kenyan border with Uganda, and Mombasa on the south-east coast.

These two events piloted a new approach by ygap Kenya to raise awareness of social entrepreneurship across the country and foster a competitive, yet cooperative and congenial, culture of finding solutions to problems. …

ygap is excited to be launching new content for the Gender Lens in Incubation and Acceleration (GLIA) Toolkit. This toolkit was developed in 2019 in partnership with the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and released at the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network Conference in February of 2020. The new content is focused on ‘Measuring Gender Equality’, which will help Entrepreneurship Support Organisations (ESOs) explore a practical approach to measure, evaluate and learn from the effectiveness of strategies implemented to promote gender equity across the scope of their organisation and operations. …

We believe that women’s entrepreneurship is an integral part of an empowered society. That’s why ygap’s work champions a world where women entrepreneurs have quality and equal opportunities to build sustainable businesses. Better economic conditions often equate with increased levels of health care, education, and prosperity for whole communities. An even playing field for all genders in entrepreneurial ecosystems everywhere is better for everyone, both in terms of business success and economic growth, and just as importantly, in the fight for equality and fairness the world over.

Despite the overwhelming benefits of women’s entrepreneurship, there are still deep inequalities between…

From concept to creation, start to scale, an entrepreneurs road is paved with relationships — the support of family and friends, the guidance of peers and fellow business owners, the trust of suppliers and loyalty of customers. Whether an independent grocery store or a juggernaut like Apple, the best and biggest brands are centred on their tribe.

Over 12 years, ygap has learnt the importance of community building, designing, testing and refining our programs to connect our entrepreneurs — with our team, with one another and with the wider ecosystem. Today, amidst a global pandemic with diverse and far-reaching consequences…

In July of 2020, ygap launched six Resiliency Accelerator Programs (Re-Accelerators), one in each area that we operate within. The main objective of these programs was to support our alumni ventures through the initial shock of the pandemic, in an effort to reduce the number of ventures that were forced to close, and minimise revenue and employment loss.

A first for ygap, these programs were designed specifically in response to the needs of our alumni communities in Kenya, South Africa, Australia, Bangladesh and the Pacific Islands, and were tailored to the needs of each context. After concluding these programs in…

Reflections on inclusion by yher Africa Regional Director, Katleho Tsoku, from the yher Africa monthly newsletter. You can sign up here.

I was recently listening to the Masters of Community podcast by David Spinks where he was in conversation with Naj Austin, the CEO of Ethel’s Club and Somewhere Good. In their conversation they unpack the concept of inclusion, and Naj shares her discomfort with it because her interpretation of inclusion is similar to “gate-crashing a party or eavesdropping on a conversation.”

At the Glamour Women of the Year Awards, Ava DuVernay articulated it profoundly when she said: “Inclusion is…

When you think of a demo day or a pitch night what probably comes to mind is an image of an entrepreneur nervously standing on a stage, going through slides in front of a packed room, with a panel of “expert” judges and potential investors ready to fire some hard hitting questions all in a matter of 5 minutes.

We know this because we have hosted them. In fact, since the First Gens program began in May 2018 we have hosted demo days for all our cohorts where program participants have pitched their businesses in front of more than 500…