 Rhaid i gael am y adeiladau, gwaith i gael'r adeiladau yn ymwneud yn ymlaenol. Maenai'n mynd i'r cyffredinol, ond ar y media'r forum economi. Y rai'r fawr cyffredin sy'n cyffredinol yw fawr i'r gwneud am y ddefnydd, y dyfodol yn gweithio'r cyffredinol. Yn y fwrdd, iawn yw'r fywm o'i ymdweud, ymdweud ymdweud, ymdweud am y mold, ymdweud ymdweud ymdweud, ymdweud ymdweud, that not only generates sustainable economic dividends but also social impact. The World Economic Forum embarked on a challenge several weeks ago, which will not end at this meeting, to identify and champion women entrepreneurs in Africa. The criteria are quite simple. It has to be a business, up and running for at least a year, generating revenue, we're under three years old, demonstrating proven innovation that makes it unique and has to deliver social impact. We were staggered by the response that we got. It was one of the toughest processes we've had to sit through. We spent a weekend deliberating over who we should shortlist and then finally who we should invite as the five challenge winners for this year's meeting. I'm delighted that three were able to join us today and we're going to hear their stories. So first we have Nelly Encozy from IMED tech group based in Bloomfontein, South Africa. Larissa Uwazi from Kigali. Carl Group is an agronomy company specialising I believe in sweet potatoes. Audrey Chang from Moringa school, Moringa accelerator based out of Nairobi in Kenya. I'm going to ask each of them to tell their stories briefly and then there will be time for some questions. Nelly please, let's start with you. I've been introduced as Nelly and Hodeysus, I wouldn't say my name again. I'm originally from Bloomfontein, South Africa. My business, IMED tech, we do medical prostheses specifically segmented on external facial prostheses and also the breast prostheses. The reason behind starting the company was that we had seen the need for the demand of prosthetics by cancer survivors who have lost precious body parts due to cancer tumors and we wanted to create some things that can cover up the past that they have lost using 3D printing. And also the purpose was to create something that can answer the call to the fourth industrial revolution where we say we want digital technology and 3D printing to be the front runners in how we address problems in Africa, especially within the health care sector. Thank you. Larissa, tell us about Calgary, what was your inspiration to set the business up and what does it do? I'm Oase Larissa, I'm from Kigali, Rwanda and I'm currently a student of the University of Rwanda. After seeing that malnutrition is a crucial program in Africa, I come up with an idea of transforming orange-placed sweet potatoes into different products like donuts, cakes, bread, spaghetti, spaghetti was my vision. As we know many children in Africa are suffering from malnutrition diseases and my project was to help those children and pregnant women to benefit from the vitamin A from orange-placed sweet potatoes and benefit from them and have a healthy life. I started from the University of Rwanda, it was a crazy idea, everyone that was approaching was laughing and saying how can you make spaghetti from sweet potatoes. But with the help of the University of Rwanda I went to the laboratory and we did spaghetti. Now we are not on the market in Kigali but we are producing donuts that are affordable to all the population so that they can benefit from vitamin A. Audrey, let's tell us a story about Moringa. Sure, so thank you to World Economic Forum for inviting us to this event. My name is Audrey, I co-founded Moringa School based in Nairobi, Kenya. Moringa School we are tackling the lack of technical skills across Africa. We were founded when I was working for Savannah Fund which is a venture capital firm investing in early-stage tech startups across the continent and the biggest problem that any of our startups were facing was their lack of technical talent. They were all outsourcing to India and when I realized that this was a huge need, ICT skills are really huge need, we decided that we are going to tackle this problem. So we have Moringa School and Moringa Dev Shop. Moringa School is our four-month accelerator program we train in web, mobile technologies, user experience and professional development. And through this program all of our students have gotten jobs as full-time software engineers and we also offer Moringa Dev Shop to further up-skill our graduates and Moringa Dev Shop we do work for clients around the world so that we can prove that there is talent in Kenya and across Africa. And that people should invest in this continent. So we are really focused on computer science now and in the future on disrupting higher education here in Africa. Thanks Audrey. Happy to take any questions. Sarah in the front row. Please wait for the microphone please. I am Andre Gakwaya from Rwanda News Agency. My first question, I see that it is for all, you have a product, innovative product which are very interesting so you have to disseminate it to produce more, you need to finance, you need to find to grow your business and to create a transformation industry and to disseminate your product. How can you get your capital finance to grow your business and to thrive people to benefit from your research? Yes it is a general question particularly Oase who is based in Rwanda. Have you been awarded Rwanda's innovative research? How they have done for you for example? Thank you. Thank you so much. Till now I have been helped by the Ministry of Youth and I City through dot Rwanda competition, business plan competition. But it was not a big fund because it was like a small competition but it helped me to produce some more donuts that my vision is spaghetti from sweet potato that needs a very big investment. You were saying about how we get fund, you know even this was an opportunity. I have through top women innovators challenge, I have been able to meet some big person who has made it in industries and I have been able to meet with other people. People in industry here in Rwanda and I hope those connection will make something in the future and also apply on other funds around the world. I am not sitting, I need to make it in and to be part of this both industrial revolution and I hope through those fund and application I will be able to reach there. Thank you. That is actually a question we should broaden out to all of you. You seem to have flourished possibly against all the odds. We keep hearing about the challenges and barriers and obstacles to entrepreneurism in this region. What are the biggest challenges you have faced nearly? One of the biggest challenges was that you know when you are introducing a new technology within a market the health sector that has always been, you know you always see the traditional sector. It was a challenge because many of them were not welcoming to the idea and you know when people are not welcoming to the idea they have to ask you quite a lot of questions that can deter you but then the nicest thing was that I had so much support from the South African government with my project and you know the challenges that I got when I was starting back in 2013. When it was just a research at my investment centre in the rest of technology to now when it's a fully fleshed product I have just minimized on the challenges and I now realize that the world is welcoming to my product. The world is welcoming to my inventions and it's moving. I always say that now more than ever Africa is moving and Africa is welcoming all these innovations created by young people. Can you pinpoint a single breakthrough moment where you thought this could just work? A single breakthrough moment was actually the previous year I had entered into a competition in South Africa because the social innovation was organized by the South African Bureau's Foundation. At that moment I was still quite doubtful of my project and I remember the minute when people heard about it everyone was so amazed across South Africa who was there at that event, it was actually some awards, everyone was amazed. At that moment I realized that now more than ever people need this and people see value in the product that I'm doing and I realized that I'm not just a single person. I owe my being to South Africa and to Africa as a whole to developing it. That's a fantastic story and Audrey what about you? For the challenges? The challenges, yeah and also maybe to talk us through the kind of the pain points, the breakthrough moment where you kind of figure Moringa's going to work. Maybe you thought it was going to work all the time. So we did do a fair amount of market research before we even chose to launch this idea. When I was working for venture capital I was constantly talking to practically anyone in the market about Moringa's school and I was asking them is this a viable solution and are people going to want it? After getting enough responses I realized this is something that we need to do. In terms of challenges, I think the educational institutions in Africa are pretty challenging in terms of the way that parents and students look at for your colleges and universities. Generally they look at these diplomas kind of as the holy grail of this is what I need to get in order to have a successful life. Although the stats are showing that that's not true, parents and students are still kind of culturally in that mindset that they need to get that diploma. So we're really challenging that notion and showing people that getting the skills is more important to really transforming their lives versus just getting that piece of paper at the end of college. So that's been a big challenge for us although we are working past it. I think our stats are really showing that when our graduates are all getting jobs, students of course on the day they want jobs, they want employment, they want to make money. So for us it's a pretty easy style when it comes to the value of our program. That's great, of course. Sir, let's have your question then I've got one on my own. My name is Ney, I write for the New Africa. I want to ask you, have you been able to measure the impact of your work? Like how many people have you helped with your innovation? I was just wondering why it came to your mind that you could actually make spaghetti from potatoes? You've talked about how the government has helped them. Have you received any help from the government? Neyli, impact, how do you measure impact? So far there's a couple of people that we have helped because when we started to assess the social project to say that we are just helping people freely, but as time went by we decided to make a business for profit business and we've just helped quite a couple of people but then we're just trying to strengthen our foundation to make sure that how then do you go to public hospitals? Because that's our target market, getting more patients and it includes getting relationships with the Ministry of Health. Those are the relationships you are still working towards and that's when we can have a bigger impact because now they have welcomed our project. We just now need to implement it at the Ministry of Health and public hospitals. Llyrysau, can I just ask you to speak slightly closer to the microphone please so we can hear you online? After doing research dissertation on sweet potatoes and found that many women in Rwanda grows that species of sweet potatoes, but they don't have somewhere to sell it and they used to see sweet potatoes as a crop, a poor crop that is food for animals and something like that. I wanted to add value because I have seen the nutrients that are in them, then I wanted people to benefit from them because I was seeing around Rwanda, there is still a rate of malnutrition that is still high and I benefited from that research by introducing a new product that maybe eating a donut of 50 francs is more easier than buying other food that contains B to mean A. So I made some affordable products that children can benefit from. Odra, I believe the question to you is that government support. Sure, so we were pretty lucky with our business model so in month three we were able to break even. So in terms of government support to financially support us, we haven't raised any money. When it comes to working with government, we are in conversations with them about scale and what that looks like for our program. How do we impact more people with our quality of education? We are talking to the government in Rwanda and across Africa to see how we can also bring our programs across the continent. One final question to me is something we all talk about here every session we are in. This place is not sure of good ideas and good people to push through ideas, but a lot of the problems is often scaling. So I am going to ask each of you how you intend to scale, what your challenges are, what your hopes are for the future and how you are going to make an even bigger impact in the years ahead. Naly, just because you are next to me, I am going to ask you to go first. To be honest, because you started in the area where I am based in which is Blue Fountain, the idea is to go nationally in South Africa and I know a lot of people have worked on the idea but most importantly is to touch base in Africa because this is not just a product for South Africa only, this is a product for Africa and I was basically looking at doing it here in Rwanda and it is so brilliant that I am in Rwanda and my idea was to scale my project right here in Rwanda. That was your idea before you came here? Before we came here, the one thing I always wanted was that East Africa is my next stop. OK, fascinating. Larissa, where are we going to go from sweet potatoes? By the way, can I buy some? Are they in the shops yet, the spaghetti? No, they are not still in shops because I have started with those products that are easier and I can make easily without big machines but I really hope in one year I will be able to bring that spaghetti from sweet potatoes. I want to impact Africa as well because we have seen that in Africa there are not many production industries and we know we export spaghetti from around the world, Italy, China and other countries and I want also to be the spaghetti seller in Africa and maybe reach even the whole world. I think you could sell your sweet potatoes spaghetti in Europe too. I am a big fan of the vegetable, I look forward to different varieties of it. Audrey, what about yourself? Sure, so in terms of scale for Moringa school, we do want to increase access to our education. We are looking to move across the continent. What that would look like is us working with one of the larger corporate companies first to really understand the skills gap in each country so that when we launch our full-time program we are directly addressing the market needs. So we don't want to make any assumptions when we move into a new country that it will be just like Kenya. So our plan is to of course scale across the continent but beyond the scale to look at our course offerings. Right now we are focused on computer programming but we want to look at the other skills that are needed in this continent. Everything that we have been talking about here at World Economic Forum is about a skills gap so we want to really use our education to employment model to fill that skills gap and we plan on taking what works now that is very effective and bringing it to new verticals. Is there a great skills gap difference between country to country? I think that was one of the great parts of attending this forum was talking to a lot of these industry leaders and understanding where their skills gaps are and what parts of the continent. It has really opened my eyes up to what else is possible. It is a huge, huge, huge problem but we are getting prepared to solve it. It is great that you have been spending your time wisely talking to as many people as possible taking advantage. I am going to ask it all three of you again one final question and you feel free to not answer but I hope you will. Have you learnt anything? Has anything about this meeting helped you at all? Have you come away with one particular grain of knowledge that you think is going to help you move forward to the next stage? Quite a lot. Okay, Naila, you again. You are keen. Quite a lot. I have been sitting down and saying that there is so much I have just learnt in just three days something that could change my life. I have learnt on the gaps that exist in Africa and my role as a young person to add within those gaps. Right now more than ever we are calling civil society, private company corporates are calling upon young people to be the front row players in us attending the fourth industrial revolution. We need to play an active role. We need to move away from just policies and start implementation and that is the most important things that I have learnt from this World Economic Forum on Africa. The future is in your hands collectively. Larissa, have you learnt anything or anything to share about your experience here? I have learnt a lot of things. I was really excited to be part of World Economic Forum and I think this has marked another phase of my life and my business. I have learnt a lot from people. I have learnt about the gaps in Africa and opportunities for women and youth in Africa and I have seen that we are the change that we want to bring. We are the change of Africa. We don't have to be left behind. I have become confident now once again in doing business in my entrepreneurship skills. I have made a lot of people and I have understood some such stories from people who started from scratch like me and it was really inspiring. I don't know how to say it, it was really great. Audrey. Awesome. I think we already knew that our model was working pretty well in Kenya but we got a lot of validation that our model will work well across Africa this week and I think that's got me really pumped about our work. Even yesterday the global director of McKinsey, he was speaking on a panel and talking about how a really major shift that Africans need to make is moving away from the four-year college and university model into short, targeted programs which is exactly what we are doing. I got really excited to hear that people were really thinking about education in a way that is completely disruptive of what the rest of the world is thinking about. And besides that, thinking a lot about how important women are even within our program to really focus on getting more women to become the software engineers so that they can become the leaders in the future. Hopefully one of our graduates will be here next year. I hope so too. We're certainly proud and delighted you were able to join us and again congratulations on being this year's challenge winners. Wish you every success in the future and I hope we can stay in touch and be with you on your journey. Thanks very much for joining us and thank you for joining us here in the room and watching live online. This session is now closed.