The African Chapters of Catalyst 2030, which have more than 140 members, have co-created Africa Forward, an initiative that aims to rapidly accelerate actions that place African challenges at the heart of collaborative, partnership-driven opportunities with a vision to speed up the attainment of the SDGs.
—Ndidi Nwuneli of Sahel Consulting Agriculture and Nutrition Ltd
Meet Africa Forward Members
The collective communities of practice supporting systems change for thriving African Social Enterprises & their supporters towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for a renewed vision and partnership-driven commitment to reshape the evolving narrative.
“African Forward Call to Action” places African narratives at the heart of collaborative partnership-driven opportunities and lays out pathways for supporting the common purpose and shared value. Meet some of the Africa Forward changemakers. .
There is an emerging, urgent need for effective, local entrepreneurial innovations to explore ways to alleviate a myriad of systemic problems – unemployment, endemic poverty, sluggish economic growth and a lack of enterprise support mechanisms in many countries
—Patrick Awuah, founder Ashesi University
Africa Forward changing the narrative
Africa Forward is a groundbreaking initiative co-created by members of the African Chapters of Catalyst 2030 to rapidly accelerate actions that place our continent’s challenges at the heart of collaborative, partnership driven opportunities.
Africa Forward’s objective is to support the next cohort of social entrepreneurs as we collaborate on innovative pathways and solutions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the continent.
Our goal is to achieve strategic shifts focusing on five Pillars, evolving the social enterprise and entrepreneurial ecosystem to create strong, supportive and collaborative social impact. Our five key areas of impact include:
Narrative shift
Restructure the approach to African narratives by profiling the African leadership of local social enterprises
Ecosystem development
Undertake initiatives to enable cooperation between governments and social entrepreneurs to strengthen the social enterprises ecosystem through collaboration and wellbeing initiatives
Funding
Redirect approaches to funding to ensure that at least 50% of all funding goes to African led organisations directly, without the use of intermediaries and with particular consideration for youth and gender focused organisations.
Job creation and career counselling
Expand the number of jobs in the social sector by 10% and use workforce development programmes and career counselling to recruit skilled African employees and bring young people into the sector.
Training and capacity development
Impart practical skills and knowledge on Social Enterprises to help organisations scale their initiatives and satisfy funder accountability requirements.
