Feature

Welcome to the first in our series of blogs on investing in inclusive innovation ecosystems for Africa’s prosperity. In this first article, co-authored by AIF Chairman Walter Fust and Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) Director, Pauline Mujawamariya Koelbl, we unpack the meaning of inclusive innovation ecosystems, highlighting the essential role of “inclusivity” towards boosting Africa’s prosperity.

Photo: Daily News

As the world celebrates World Aids Day today, its prudent to review the fight against the scourge. Since the start of 21st Century, HIV/Aids has increasingly been labelled as an "African disease".

At a time that the media industry, globally, is confronting dwindling revenue for a host of reasons, it appears the New York Times is yet to fully harness the full potentials of revenue models available to it. New York Times only needs apply a little touch to its so called investigative stories to deliver a readymade blockbuster script to Hollywood in the fiction category.

Women working in the farm

The agriculture sector employs more people in Africa than any other industry and it also accounts for almost half of the continent’s GDP.
Yet inefficiencies in the sector have held back production in the sub-Saharan African region, hindering the sector’s growth and stymieing the industry’s ability to achieve cross-border trade and long-term food security.

The growing resistance to antibiotics and other antimicrobials due to their overuse and misuse both in humans and animals has become an alarming global threat to public health, food safety and security, causing the deaths of 700,000 people each year. This is a fact.

The Ripening Market
Africa’s Private Equity Market is maturing quickly and growing even more crowded. According to the Boston Consulting Group’s 2016 report “Why Africa Remains Ripe for Private Equity”, around 25 years ago, only twelve African based Private Equity firms were managing a combined $1 billion. Today this figure is upwards of $ 30 billion managed by more than 200 African Private Equity firms.

SA Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa (News Ghana)

An Address by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa at World AIDS Day 2017 commemoration, Walter Sisulu University, Mthatha

International Alert works with young people in neighbourhoods near Tunis to promote local government participation and workforce development (swissinfo.ch)

Urban working-class areas around the Tunisian capital, Tunis, have a reputation as breeding grounds for crime and religious extremism. Switzerland has contributed to a local project that aims to help youth find a job and get involved in public affairs.