CDM & MOOCs4Africa support young entrepreneurs at ADB Annual Conf.
© 2015 EPFL
To kick off the launch of CDM's first MOOC, featuring African entrepreneurs, Nettra Pan represented CDM on the jury of the MyAfricanStartup pitching competition, and gave remarks about African entrepreneurship ecosystem at the African Development Bank annual conference in Abidjan, Ivory Coast this May.
To kick off the launch of CDM's first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), featuring African entrepreneurs, Nettra Pan represented CDM on the jury of the MyAfricanStartup pitching competition, and gave remarks about African entrepreneurship ecosystem at the African Development Bank annual conference in Abidjan, Ivory Coast this May.
The MOOC, called Launching New Ventures, is a free course hosted on Coursera on the topic of entrepreneurship and strategy for technology-driven ventures. It launched on May 25th, 2015 with over 5,000 learners enrolled, 8% of which were learners from Africa. MyAfricanStartup, an online directory of African entrepreneurs, partnered with the African Development Bank, to host a pitching competitionm over a two-day period during the annual conferences in Abidjan. The international event provided a rich platform for improving the impact and reach of the Launching New Ventures MOOC. Towards the end of the course in July, the course subscription rate had reached 8,600 learners, including several entrepreneurs who had been in the audience in Abdijan. 42% of the course learners are from emerging economies, and 13% of the learners are from Africa.
Professor Chris Tucci and Professor Marc Gruber, instructors in the Launching New Ventures MOOC, will be welcoming the top three performers of the course and the finalists of the the pitching competition to EPFL for a one-day workshop:
- Ms. Ange Emmanuelle EFFI, winner of MyAfricanStartup's 2015 competition and co-founder of Crowd Sav’In (see her pitch in French here)
- Ms. Marina LOUGBEGNOU, co-founder of BLOODBOOK (see her pitch in French here)
- Mr. Francis YAPOBI, co-founder of Airshop (see his pitch in French here)
Christian Kamayou, founder of MyAfricanStartup; Francis YAPOBI, co-founder of Airshop; Ange Emmanuelle EFFI, winner of MyAfricanStartup's 2015 competition and co-founder of Crowd Sav’In; Marina LOUGBEGNOU, co-founder of BLOODBOOK; Nettra PAN, PhD student at CDM
View a recap of the two-day event at the African Development Bank below:
You can sign up for the next edition of the free course, Launching New Ventures, or put it on your Watchlist here.