NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

The focus areas for their workshops, panel discussions, international speakers and hack-a-thons (workshops designed to crack the trickiest challenges we face) are:

Entrepreneurship: Building an enabling entrepreneurship ecosystem

The launch of the Africa 2.0 Youth Employment and Empowerment Programme (YEEP) and panel discussions with key investors, a StartUp Africa pitching competition for 20 African Entrepreneurs (including mentors and judges from local Mozambican StartUps)

Technology: Making the robots work for us

Africa 2.0 will be launching their partnership with We Think Code (teaching young Africans to code), and looking at the critical themes of how to get more women in to science & technology and how technology can help leapfrog Africa’s transformation and address particularly African challenges.

Women: Women as drivers for change

Ensuring effective resource allocation for African women to access healthcare, as well as looking at the role of women in peace building activities and addressing the obstacles that female entrepreneurs encounter.

Agribusiness: Tackling food security through agropreneurship

The Africa 2.0 No Hunger programme will be launched in this workshop, and representatives from Dangote and FAO will look at how nurturing agro-entrepreneurs can support African development in sustainable ways. We will also have assess how Governments have met the commitments of the Maputo Declaration through allocation of funds to agribusiness

These areas are all part of the Africa 2.0 Manifesto (http://www.apo.af/dmDz9I)– a document put together by the organisations Champions, and endorsed by Institutions like the African Union and several Heads of State, to address the vaccum that exists for a common and aligned vision for the youth of the continent.