Africa In Focus

Africa In Focus: "The mainstream thinking now is that Africa is different and we could get it right if we want. The choice is fully ours, and it is now time for us to define what we want."

African Development Bank (AFDB) President, Dr. Donald Kaberuka.

Monday 23 June 2014

She Leads Africa Launches Female Entrepreneurs Pitch Competition in West Africa, $10,000 Cash Prize for 1st Place


 

She Leads Africa, a social enterprise ensuring that women are part of Africa’s growth story, has announced the launch of a business pitch competition exclusively for female entrepreneurs, which will give the most promising female entrepreneurs in West Africa a platform to connect to prominent mentors, business funding and new market opportunities.

“Female entrepreneurs are unfortunately missing from the conversation around Africa’s growth story but the continent will not be able to reach its full potential without the full economic participation of women”, says lead organiser Afua Osei.

She Leads Africa addresses this challenge head on with a series of programs to help female entrepreneurs gain business fundamentals, connect to an active business network, and increase their access to financing.

The first initiative to increase access to finance is a Pitch Competition in September which will screen applications from across West Africa to identify the top 10 talented female entrepreneurs who have founded or co-founded early stage startups. Finalists will be selected by professionals in the consulting, venture capital, and finance industry based on the strength of the idea, ability to scale, understanding of the market, and quality of the management team. Special consideration will be given to entrepreneurs in the technology sector.  

Finalists will be paired with mentors to help advance their businesses and the entrepreneurs will be brought to Lagos to pitch their businesses to a panel of notable business personalities including Hakeem Belo-Osagie Chairman, Etisalat Nigeria; and Ngozi Edozien, CEO InVivo Partners; and Bola Adesola, CEO, Standard Chartered Bank. Finalists will compete for a $10,000 cash first place prize, one-on-one meetings with venture capitalists, legal advice from a premier law firm, free business lines and internet packages for a year, tablets, SME accounting software and more.

The Pitch Competition is supported by sponsors Etisalat, Udo Udoma & Belo-Osagie, FSDH Capital, Start Smart Ghana and media partners Genevieve Magazine, Tech Cabal, Venture Burn, and Bella Naija.

Applications for entrepreneurs open June 23rd and will close July 30th 2014.

For more information please visit: www.SheLeadsAfrica.org.

#Competition #SheleadsAfrica #Africaentrepreneur #Womentrepreneur  

Thursday 19 June 2014

Interview With Hauwa Shekarau On Sexual Violence In Nigeria and The VAPPBill


Sexual Violence In Nigeria and The VAPPBill

Everyday, someone somewhere is abused. This abuse could be sexual, emotional, physical or psychological.

Unfortunately, these abuses are mostly faced by young people and women.

In Nigeria the report is shocking, especially with the operative socio-cultural African attitude of keeping “private issues private.”

Most of the time, cases of domestic violence, rape, incest & trafficking are not publicly discussed and treated accordingly because of fear of stigmatization. Victims mostly succumb to endure this trauma, day in day out as they do not want other people to consider them unfortunate or weak.

The incessant cases of kidnapping have not helped to diminish this problem. The case of the over 200 missing school girls is still fresh on our mind and it has sparked international protest which is driven by the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls across various social media.

Like the fear of most concerned people, the victims may have been subjected to rape, girl child marriage or other sort of human violence.

But what are the support systems available for such victims?

In the case of rape, many victims often stoop to aborting the baby through unconventional means because of the strict abortion rule in Nigeria. Unwanted pregnancies are often terminated by dangerous quacks as a result of the restrictive abortion law that do not conform to the realities of the present day society.

This has caused the number of maternal mortality rate to shoot up in the country.

A recent statistics released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) shows that Nigeria is one of the two countries that contributes to 1/3 of the total maternal mortality death globally (the other one is India).

Also, a statistics from Ipas Nigeria states that young people contribute more than half of the 760,000 unsafe abortions taking place annually in Nigeria while up to 10,000 maternal deaths annually in Nigeria due to unsafe abortions.

To address these social imbalance, Women's Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA) and Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) with support from the Department 

For International Development (DFID) amalgamated 9 different Bills to create the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Bill (VAPP Bill) which will help to eradicate violence in the public and private places as well as all sort of sexual and domestic violence.

When passed into law, the VAPP Bill will also reduce to the barest minimum the cases of rape by minor, incest, maternal death and domestic violence. 

The bill is currently awaiting approval of the Senate for it to be passed into law.

In this short audio, Ms Hauwa Shekarau, the National President of Int'l Federation of Women Lawyers, (FIDA) Nigeria and Ipas legal Advisor spoke on the credence of the VAPP Bill and some of the issue it addresses.

You can listen to her via:- https://soundcloud.com/oluwabusayo-sotunde/sexual-violence-in-nigeria-and-the-vappbill




Tuesday 17 June 2014

PayPal Extends Service To 4 African Nations


Millions of customers in Cameroon, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and six other countries globally will now be able to use PayPal online payment service, increasing financial inclusion among the unbanked.

Other countries that will now be able to use PayPal service include Belarus, Macedonia, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro and Paraguay. This would bring the number of country PayPal serve to two hundred and three.

The on-line payment service extension came years after countries like Nigeria have been sidelined due to reports of financial fraud.

PayPal originally offers "send money" services to customers to enable them purchase goods and services at PayPal-authorised merchant sites while protecting their financial details at a fee that is covered by the merchants.

However, once the service is launched, people with internet access and an authorised bank card will be able to register for a PayPal account and make payments to millions of sites worldwide.

PayPal Executive in Charge of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, Rupert Keeley told Reuters in an interview that reinvention of the company’s service to suit mobile phones has allowed it to extend its service to fast-growing developing markets.

On its service offering, keeley said for now, the company does not yet cover peer-to-peer transactions, which allow consumers to send money to other consumers.

“It has not yet enabled local merchants in the new markets to receive payments, nor is it offering other forms of banking services,” he added.

Established in 2007, PayPal has about 150 million active accounts from which it generated $1.8 billion revenue in Q1 2014.