Road to Nairobi 2016 is an initiative to support young entrepreneurs that was launched on 21 March last, International Youth Day, to bringing together young entrepreneurs in eight African countries with agents of change, and to identify the youth employment related challenges and opportunities.
A coach with six young Europeans and Africans representing the Dutch Building Bridges Project, promoter of the project, departed from Johannesburg (South Africa) on 12 August and, from there, it travelled through Mozambique, Malawi, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya for 100 days. On the way, the travellers met 80 young entrepreneurs and local youth organisations that explained their business experiences related to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and their best practices to combat youth unemployment, which stands at 50 % in many countries in Africa.

 

Final destination

The results of the trip will be submitted in the course of the first week of the second High Level Meeting (HLM2) of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC) in Nairobi (Kenya), an event that will attract high-level policy makers and directors from around the world. HLM2 seeks to facilitate a more effective type of cooperation between nations, businesses and organisations to contribute to the SDGs, and more specifically, to the economic empowerment of women and young people.
Within the framework of this event, four business projects selected on the Road to Nairobi 2016 tour will be presented to changemakers and to corporate investors and leaders. The young people who have developed these proposals will be invited to share their experiences and show how they are heading solutions and actions to promote the co-creation of employment among young people in their countries during the Global Entrepreneurship Week in Kenya.

These are some of the selected projects that were discovered on the Road to Nairobi 2016 tour:

avomeru_roadtonairobi2 avomeru_roadtonairobiAvomeru (Tanzania)

The origin of this project lies within an avocado and the community that has been growing them for years, Leguruki in Tanzania. Avomeru is a business initiative that employs young local farmers to grow, process and extract avocado oil, a product used in the agri-food sector and in cosmetics. Avomeru provides these young people with efficient and affordable oil processing technology, as well as a business structure designed to ensure the oil reaches the market.

Aqua Clean Initiative (Kenya) aquaclean aquaclean_roadtonairobi2

More than one thousand million people in the world live in slums and have no access to water. One of these suburbs is Kibera in Nairobi, where a young student, Ricardo Garcia Castañeda, launched a pilot project, as part of his degree works so that the people in the neighbourhood could buy water, take a shower, or wash their clothes. To provide a holistic solution to the challenges of living in a poor neighbourhood, the Aqua Clean Initiative offers basic services (water, toilets, showers and laundry), as well as the empowerment of the thousands of residents in the suburb through microcredits, WiFi cafés and markets.

kigali_roadtonairobi kigali_roadtonairobi2Kigali Cow Horns (Rwanda)

In the district of Kicukiro in Kigali (Uganda), a score of young people on the verge of exclusion are learning to process cow horns. These are young people from poor families or orphans who have survived thanks to the limited proceeds obtained from selling pieces of coal; homeless youths exposed to hunger and cold that have broken the cycle of poverty thanks to this initiative. These young people process horns to produce several items such as bracelets, earrings, or necklaces.

tazma_rpadtonairobi tazma_rpadtonairobi2TazMa Fanshion (Malawi)

Tawile Kumsinda is the youngest entrepreneur encountered on the Road to Nairobi 2016 tour. This fashion designer, who is only 15 years old, has already submitted her collections to various events, with proposals that break away from global trends, with bold colours, African raw materials and risky designs.