The Africa Women Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (AWIEF) (www.AWIEForum.org) is thrilled to announce that nominations are officially open for the 2024 AWIEF Awards. This prestigious event celebrates the incredible achievements and contributions of women founders and entrepreneurs across Africa. The AWIEF Awards honor those who drive inclusive economic growth and development through their visionary leadership and innovative business practices.

AWIEF is a renowned pan-African organization dedicated to empowering women economically by closing gender gaps and promoting business leadership and entrepreneurship across the continent.

Why Nominate?

Nominees for the AWIEF Awards should be emerging and established female entrepreneurs who have demonstrated outstanding vision, leadership, innovation, and business success. This is your chance to shine a spotlight on the incredible women making a difference in their industries and communities.

Categories

Young Entrepreneur Award: For exceptional young female entrepreneurs (ages 18-35) who have built successful and sustainable enterprises.
Tech Entrepreneur Award: Celebrating women who have leveraged technology to drive innovation and achieve significant impact.
Agri Entrepreneur Award: Honoring leaders in agriculture who contribute to food security and environmental sustainability.
Creative Industry Award: Recognizing excellence in film, music, entertainment, arts, fashion, and media.
Empowerment Award: For women who have made a profound impact in mentoring and empowering others.
Energy Entrepreneur Award: Highlighting achievements in the oil, gas, and renewable energy sectors.
Social Entrepreneur Award: For those who have developed innovative solutions to social issues.
Lifetime Achievement Award: Honoring women who have made enduring contributions across multiple areas or disciplines.

Save the Date

The 2024 AWIEF Awards winners will be celebrated at a spectacular awards ceremony and gala dinner on November 29, 2024, at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC), Cape Town, South Africa. This event will cap off the AWIEF2024 conference, which takes place on November 28-29, 2024.

How to Nominate

Visit our nomination landing page (https://apo-opa.co/3x1CBrC).
Register an entrant profile by clicking “Submit an Entry.”
Fill in the nomination form.
Click submit.

Nominations close on August 5, 2024, at 11:59 PM GMT. You can nominate yourself or someone else.

Judging

Entries will be evaluated by an esteemed panel of international judges.

Join Us

This is your chance to be part of a movement that recognizes and celebrates the incredible women entrepreneurs transforming Africa. Let’s honor those who lead with innovation, inspire with their achievements, and empower their communities.

For more details and to see past winners, click here (https://apo-opa.co/4e6SYno). For any inquiries, please email us at awards@awieforum.org

Don’t miss this opportunity! Nominate now and be part of the change!

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Africa Women Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (AWIEF).

Senior officials from the African Development Bank Group (www.AfDB.org) detailed the positive impacts of Bank-supported projects affecting virtually all facets of life across the continent during 2023—a year hailed as one of the most successful in its history.

Bank Vice President Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade said: “2023 was an exceptional year for the African Development Bank, $10.1 billion in approvals, a 30% increase on 2022—this is the second highest level approvals in the history of the Bank.”

Akin-Olugbade, Vice-President for the Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery Complex at Africa’s premier development finance institution, was participating in a high-level panel discussion on Thursday, following the publication of the latest edition of the Bank’s Annual Development Effectiveness Review (ADER).

The review—unveiled at the Bank’s Annual Meetings currently taking place in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi—serves as a critical benchmark to assess Bank Group’s progress in advancing Africa’s development priorities.

This 2023 edition highlighted the Bank’s efforts to assist African countries confront global economic headwinds which have hit the continent in recent years.

The ADER 2024 report, titled ‘Investing in Africa’s resilience and inclusive growth,’ concludes that Africa has shown remarkable resilience, steadily charting a course back to economic growth. Despite the challenging operating environment that contributed to implementation delays, the Bank’s project portfolio regained its growth momentum, reaching a value of nearly $60 billion.

Armand Nzeyimana, Director of the Bank’s Development Impact and Results Department stressed how the Bank had created new tools and instruments to measure the impact of its development projects and programmes. He said they could now be followed online, and the results monitored. The Bank now boasts a new state of the art mapping system to track such projects.

“We are interested in tangible outcomes, such as kilometers of roads built, jobs created – the true measure of success for the Bank is the benefits provided to communities and people across the continent,” he said.

In a wide-ranging discussion, several panel speakers emphasized the direct impacts the Bank’s support had had in the past year in its High 5 strategic priority areas which are essential for creating Africa’s economic transformation. These are: Light Up and Power Africa, Feed Africa, Industrialize Africa, Integrate Africa, and Improve the Quality of Life for the People of Africa.

The Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer of the Bank Hassatou Diop N’Sele told the gathering that she was delighted to report that the Bank was now on very solid ground and pointed to the Triple AAA rating it received from rating agencies and thanked the Bank’s Boards of Directors and Governors for their approval of a $117 billion general callable capital increase.

“The African Development Bank is a very strong bank, we have a very strong profile, and this was confirmed by credit rating agencies,” she said. But she added work still needed to be done for the Bank to be able to raise even more capital on markets.

Solomon Quaynor, Vice-President for Private Sector, Infrastructure&Industrialization, added that the Bank had enhanced its reputation as the “solutions’ Bank” and continued to focus on infrastructure projects which could change how business was conducted across the continent.

He pointed out that the Bank was focusing on “green minerals” and said that the Bank was prioritizing projects which would ensure that those minerals were never exported simply as raw materials but as part of the Bank-supported wider industrialization process.

“That is the anchor of this project, we are going to build agricultural zones, industrial parks. The core competency of infrastructure development is to combine it with the promotion of economic growth,” he said.

Senior Vice President Swazi Tshabalala, Vice President for President for Power, Energy, Climate and Green Growth Kevin Kariuki and Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development Beth Dunford, shared their complexes’ results during the programme’s panel session.

Click here (https://apo-opa.co/3wRw176) for the full report.

Click here for photos and replay (https://apo-opa.co/4aRlCWC) of the session.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Development Bank Group (AfDB).

Contact:
Jonathan Clayton
Communication and External Relations
email: media@afdb.org

About the African Development Bank Group :
The African Development Bank Group is Africa’s premier development finance institution. It comprises three distinct entities: the African Development Bank (AfDB), the African Development Fund (ADF) and the Nigeria Trust Fund (NTF). On the ground in 41 African countries with an external office in Japan, the Bank contributes to the economic development and the social progress of its 54 regional member states. For more information: www.AfDB.org

Top development organisations have pledged to forge partnerships to expand the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS), an initiative aimed at building resilient African food systems based on diverse, nutritious, and climate-adapted crops grown in healthy soils.

On the sidelines of the African Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit in Nairobi, the African Union’s Commissioner for Rural Development and Agriculture, Ambassador Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko, African Development Bank Group Vice President Dr. Beth Dunford and other leaders called for African countries to join the VACS strategic partnership by aligning with the African Development Bank’s flagship initiative Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT).  Five of TAAT’s priority crops – cassava, orange-fleshed sweet potato, sorghum, millet and high-iron beans – are also targeted by VACS, which the U.S. Department of State, the African Union, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization launched in February 2023.

“I am excited to see how the Bank through its TAAT initiative, the United States Department of State, the African Union, IFAD [International Fund for Agricultural Development] and CGIAR centers are developing a relationship to advance the work of VACS, also Feed the Future and the African Union Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan, and the Soil Initiative for Africa,” Dunford, the Bank’s Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development told participants.

TAAT, part of the Bank Group’s Feed Africa strategy, delivers heat-tolerant, drought-resistant, and other climate-smart certified seeds to millions of Africa’s smallholder farmers, with the goal to produce 120 million additional tons of food in Africa and lift 130 million people out of poverty.  The African Union Commission-mandated Soil Initiative for Africa is a framework effort to systematically improve Africa’s soil health and productivity. The United States Government launched the Feed the Future initiative in 2010 to address global hunger and food insecurity.

“Working together under the umbrella of this plan embodies the aspirations and priorities of African nations in building a prosperous, food-secure future,” Dunford added.

Leaders issued the call during a side event titled Advancing the Soil Initiative for Africa through the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soil. The summit closed on May 9 with leaders endorsing the African Union’s Soil Initiative for Africa framework statement and the Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan.   

“A Soil Initiative for Africa statement captures the urgency of the situation we face in Africa very well: ‘Since 2000 only 25% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s agricultural production growth came from crop yield improvement, while 75% resulted from expansion area under cropland.’ Clearly that’s not sustainable. The African Union’s Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan notes, ‘projections suggest that more than half of the currently arable land may be unusable by 2050’ – if that doesn’t concentrate our attention, I’m not sure what will,” U.S. Special Envoy for Food Security Dr. Cary Fowler said during the event panel discussion that identified partnership opportunities and explored potential areas of collaboration between the African Union, African Development Bank and VACS stakeholders.

“We know very clearly that for crops to be productive, need good soils. We also need to realize that soils, to be productive, need the right crops. The two are related,” Fowler added

“More than one billion [Africans] remain unable to afford a healthy diet,” said Commissioner Sacko in her remarks to event attendees. “We are really tired of one meeting after another – we want action…that is why I support this initiative because I believe concrete actions are tangible,” he added.

The event featured during a panel discussion to identify partnership opportunities and potential spheres of collaboration between the African Union, African Development Bank and VACS stakeholders.

Other participants included: Lindiwe Sibanda, Chair of the CGIAR System Board; Malawi’s Minister for Agriculture Sam Kawale, MP; International Fund for Agricultural Development Vice President Dr. Gerardine Mukeshimana; Italy’s Ambassador to Kenya, Roberto Natali, who represented the G7 and Mildred Pita, Head of Public Affairs, Science and Sustainability for Africa at German chemical firm, Bayer, who announced a $1 million donation in kind to support VACS.

Wole Fatunbi, Agriculture Director of Research and Innovation with the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa moderated the Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit side event. The Summit, organized by the African Union, in collaboration with AUDA-NEPAD, regional economic communities and other partners, built consensus on an African Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan and the Soils Initiative for Africa, both of which aim to stem a widespread decline in soil quality of African farmland.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Development Bank Group (AfDB).

Media Contact:
Alphonso Van Marsh 
Digital Content and Events Officer 
African Development Bank 
email: media@afdb.org