We’ll continue to identify, empower, showcase African entrepreneurs – Joy Francis

JOY SMART FRANCIS is the Executive Director of Africa’s Young Entrepreneurs (A.Y. E) Organization, the largest entrepreneurship network in Africa. She is also the lead consultant and founder of whentoleave.org, a consulting firm that helps victims of domestic violence and abuse in marriage and relationships. In this interview, the Executive Director talks about her company and other issues with Daily Champion. Excerpt:

How do you organize, unite, and empower entrepreneurs in Africa?

The Africa’s Young Entrepreneurs Organization is headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, with a footprint in 20 African Countries. Our vision of Identifying, empowering and showcasing African entrepreneurs living in Africa and those in the Diaspora for poverty eradication, job creation and economic development remains our focus. A.Y.E highlights creating innovative platforms that help entrepreneurs collaborate, network, trade, be empowered, be educated and grow their businesses. To achieve this, we follow creative pathways that guarantee success.

What does it mean to empower entrepreneurs? It simply means to make these entrepreneurs stronger and more confident, especially in controlling their lives and claiming their rights. We achieve this by organizing and uniting entrepreneurs from across the Continent in a manner that promotes collaboration, trade, trust, and a community that supports each other.

Uniting entrepreneurs in Africa is at the forefront of our engagements and in achieving this noble objective; we continue to leverage on innovative platforms to eliminate the borders that divide us. A united Africa is an empowered Africa, and an empowered Africa is a prosperous Africa without borders.

What are your empowerment programmes?

Our programes are strategically created to solve problems, meet the United Nations SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and provide sustainable solutions through entrepreneurship development, empowerment, espousal and education. Our creative and forward-thinking team continuously embarks on research and developments to create activities, platforms and programmess that do not only solve the problem of today but provides solutions for tomorrow’s challenges.

The Mission 1 Million Entrepreneurs (M1ME) initiative designed to train one million entrepreneurs by the year 2025, focuses on entrepreneurship education and involves developing entrepreneurs by providing them with relevant information in the areas of business development, entrepreneurial mindset, marketing and sales, customer relationship management, finance and accounting and social media management.

One of our most successful platforms in the socio-economic development of entrepreneurs comes in form of our social cooperative enterprise called the Entrepreneurs Trust Fund. Members of the E-Trust Fund community are schooled on business sustainability, provided opportunities for loans at no interest rate with no collateral and paperwork. They are also provided with free legal advisory, free medical healthcare advisory, free business advisory and are offered opportunities to acquire various equipment needed to start and grow their businesses.

How do you help businesses grow?

The key elements needed for business growth are Vision and Stamina. Our programmes provide entrepreneurs with the tools and resources. All I have mentioned above are needed to start, scale or sustain their businesses. We offer them the right ingredients; so, they can fine-tune their corporate vision and build stamina to withstand challenges. The organization also helps to build traction for business growth by leveraging our huge database of members and our social assets. Our platforms are strategically designed to help budding entrepreneurs to grow.

What are your plans to reach out to SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) in remote or rural communities?

It is not a plan for us at A.Y.E as we have done this over the years in different parts of Africa and we will not stop until the SDG 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 16 and 17 are achieved.

A.Y.E programmes are designed with technology as the core base for delivery, awareness, adoption and management. However, our programmes also put into consideration MSMEs in rural communities. Over the 10 years of our operations, we have focused more on rural access and small community development. While we work with rural artisans and rural micro-business owners, we design cluster support programs supervised remotely by the Organization’s Project team who report directly to the business development and programs division of the Organization.

We applaud other organizations who are constantly engaging MSMEs in the remote rural communities however; we are not enough and will need support from everyone and anyone who has the means.

How do artisans get access to capital for their start-ups?

Over the years, the organization has created valuable solutions to ensure deserving entrepreneurs get access to funding and support to improve their businesses. The Entrepreneurs TRUST FUND is one of such platforms out of many that focus on all forms of artisanship. Through this programme, they can build healthy capital and exchange this capital to grow their businesses. They can also request for loans on the platform after becoming members of the cooperative societies and showing their capacity to sustain their business or can prove the viability of their business through results generated.

How do you get support and empower innovations with the capacity to render impact and positive change?

As a non-profit, the organization generates funding for our different impact solutions. Over the years, the organization has interacted with Presidents of Nations, Governors of States, philanthropists and captains of industries to fund some of our initiatives. However, with dwindling resources and more areas of impact necessitated by global trends, the organization has to expand its revenue sources to be able to meet the growing demand of social and economic interventions needed for Africa. We continuously seek partnerships and collaborations from organizations, philanthropists and corporate institutions to fulfil our mission.

How do you help African founders to build creative companies that attract and win investors across the globe?

Through our programmes, we inculcate the basics of business foundations, which are taught through our educational programmes. The organization also offers scholarships to go on exchange programmes and structure their solutions for a global audience, giving them the advantage of aspiring for global relevance.

Why do you render funds for innovations, agriculture, to start-ups and for artisans?

Deserving entrepreneurs who have shown promise to create solutions that solve specific problems in Africa. We are not biased in our selection for who gets funded.  However, we focus on young entrepreneurs between ages 18 and 45 across Africa irrespective of their sector or business preference. The criterion for inclusion in our empowerment circle is entrepreneurship for the development of the African continent.

How long have you been managing the expansion and strategic efforts of A. Y. E across Africa?

As a core leader of the organization functioning as the Regional Director since 2015, I focus on policy formulation, strategy development, funding & organizational development, evaluation, monitoring & sustainability, expansion and creative programme development. I was appointed as the Executive Director for Africa’s Young Entrepreneurs Organization and her affiliates in January 2020.

What are your plans for having a digital economy in the nearest future?

The digital economy concept was unpopular when we started talking about it. Now that the world has caught up with us at A.Y.E, I will like to inform you that our platforms are mostly digitally-driven. We integrated our offerings and services based on the expanded benefits of the economy and the expected reach that digital execution offers. Strategically speaking, the Entrepreneurs Trust Fund platform which is one of the most innovative cooperatives in the world currently leverages digital assets in carrying out transactions. We are working on integrating the currencies and digital assets into the global blockchain system to enable our global community to trade with ease across our platforms. In terms of Trade, the organization designed a platform where Africans can trade seamlessly and make payments with zero risk of loss due to either poor service or product. Our focus on maintaining a digital economy is undoubtedly a key focus in all our organizational processes and programme implementations.

What areas in the industry are you looking at to empower?

We empower entrepreneurs from all industries because you can never know which of the businesses will become a unicorn or which of them will grow to become a conglomerate that would employ over 500,000 employees. We do not segregate nor are we biased in our selection process. We focus on all industries; however, this does not take away the fact that some business sectors are the focus area for the world. For example, in the Agricultural sector; we even identify innovative entrepreneurs with phenomenal solutions that are designed to solve the problems in Africa. This way, we are giving the opportunity to more people to succeed in the continent.

Can you tell us about your driving force?

Our driving force is the power inherent in the A.Y.E Vision and Slogan.

We have seen the future, and it clearly shows us that entrepreneurship development is a defining tool in securing the future for this generation and the next. We need to develop Techpreneurs, MedEntrepreneurs, Agripreneurs, Edupreneurs and entrepreneurs in different sectors of the economy and not just in manufacturing and food processing. We will continue to identify, empower and showcase African entrepreneurs who are either living in the continent or in the Diaspora so as to promote intra-trade, extended business lifespan, enhance collaboration and build Diaspora engagement. Achieving this and many more objectives will bring us closer to eradicating poverty in Africa, massive job creation, economic growth and actualizing our Vision.

We are also driven by the desire to take this continent to a place where we can boldly say that the poverty level in Africa has been grossly reduced to almost zero. Entrepreneurs will then be able to fully harness all the opportunities and resources that are available in the continent. We have so much as a continent and we should be able to transform what we have into goldmines that will make us a formidable force to reckon with globally while positioning Africa no longer as a disadvantaged continent or as the continent always in need but as a global superpower.

For how many years have you been running this organization?

A.Y.E was established in 2010 and we started operations in 2012. I took the mantle of office in 2020 and to date, I have fostered growth, collaboration, expansion and corporate relevance.

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