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Rabat – The philanthropic and entrepreneurship-fostering program Africa’s Business Heroes (ABH) is calling for Moroccan entrepreneurs to present their ideas and compete for monetary support and business training.
Zahra Baitie-Boateng, ABH’s Partnerships and Program Manager, told Morocco World News that the ABH competition is focusing this year on Morocco and North Africa, adding: “we would like to see more Moroccan [entrepreneurs and small business owners] in our finalist ranking, especially among our Top 10.”
Over the recent years, the competition received hundreds of applications from Moroccan entrepreneurs yet only one of them succeeded in reaching the final rankings. “We have had one finalist from Morocco: Abid Khirani, CEO and Founder of Casky who was a 2020 Top 50 finalist,” she added.
The ABH competition was initiated by the Jack Ma Foundation and sponsored by the Alibaba Foundation to promote entrepreneurship in Africa and assist 100 African entrepreneurs over a ten-year period.
Explaining the focus of the competition on the African continent, Baitie-Boateng told MWN that “Africa has the highest entrepreneurship rate in the world with 22% of Africa’s working age population starting their own businesses.”
Urging new applications to “be authentic and tell [their] stories,” the ABH program manager said that the competition is expecting over 15,000 applications this year.
The top 10 finalists will receive portions of the contest’s $1.5 million grant, with the top three gaining the respective amounts of $300,000, $250,000, and $150,000. The rest will have $100,000 in prize funding.
Each finalist gets an additional $10,000 that covers the expenses of the training program in the Alibaba Group’s headquarters in Hangzhou, China.
The applications to the ABH competition are open in English and French until June 6 to all businesses that have been operating legally for at least three years in Africa. The businesses must have generated a positive impact on their communities.
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ABH can be an opportunity for Moroccan entrepreneurs to benefit from business training programs, mentorships from renowned business leaders, and networking opportunities as well as media and public exposure through the ABH television show that follows the journey of the applicants, Baitie-Boateng argued.
Recalling her experience as a participant, Khadija Mohamed Elbedweihy, winner of last year’s edition, told MWN that the competition “gave us [together with her team] a chance to strengthen our product and company but also fill any gaps that were identified.”
Elbedweihy is also the ABH local community lead for North Africa and the founder of PraxiLabs. The platform provides interactive 3D simulation of a realistic lab for virtual hands-on experience for the benefit of students.
Grateful for her journey, the ABH 2021 winner told us that ABH helped PraxiLabs to partner with “several well-established local entities in Africa, a market we always had a focus on and wanted to establish our presence in, till making the best use of the prize money to hit very important milestones in our roadmap.”
