Background

The Impact!Africa Social Entrepreneurship Summit is a partnership by the British Council and Ashoka to accelerate innovative solutions to Africa’s most pressing challenges by inspiring, supporting and connecting leading social entrepreneurs and key ecosystem players across countries, organizations and sectors such as policy, social investment, business and media across Africa.

The first edition of the Summit took place in Johannesburg in June 2018. It was a vibrant and action-focused event that brought over 200 leading social innovators and young leaders active in Africa‘s key social issues as well as 400 key players from the corporate, investment and public sectors to share, learn and co-create new solutions to current challenges.

The second edition of Impact!Africa Summit will take place on December 4th-5th, 2019 in the East African hub city of Nairobi which is globally reputed as a hotspot for Social Entrepreneurship and technological innovation.
 

Thematic Focus

The envisaged conference theme will be ‘COLLABORATIVE FINANCE FOR SOCIAL INNOVATION’. The conference topics will cover two areas of discussion related to social innovation and its adoption and growth in Africa and bring together experts and participants, from across Sub Saharan Africa, including private and public sector institutions, environmental NGOs, academia and international agencies and entrepreneurs.

Future Financing Models for Social Innovation

This sub-theme will seek to engage conference participants in dialogue and answer critical questions such as:

•  Is there a need for financial innovation?
•  What is currently happening?
•  Which financing models are best suited for Africa?
•  What is needed to create a continuum of financial support?

Framework for Scalable Social Innovation

This sub-theme is designed to engage conference participants in dialogue on the steps needed to rapidly grow social innovation in Africa to meet the SDG objectives and set the continent on a path to attain the AU, Agenda 2063 target. The session will provide pathways by which various available solutions can be scaled up to touch the lives of over a billion people on the continent. The sessions will also generate recommendations for developing a strongly linked ecosystem across Africa to support systemic change and efficiently make use of available resources and infrastructure.

Outputs of Impact!Africa Summit

The outputs of the Impact!Africa Summit are to:

1.  Identify models for collaborative social finance, which includes impact investing
2.  Identify collaboration models to scale financial investment innovations across sectors and geographies
3.  Policy guidelines for financial stakeholders and social entrepreneurship in Africa (with a follow up action with AUC and relevant government to discuss/ share during the next heads of state summit).
4.  Recommendations and actions for a Pan African impact investment and funding to support social entrepreneurs.
5.  Peer to peer connections with various stakeholders for future partnerships and collaboration opportunities.
6.  Dissemination information on the Impact! Africa Fund and related support mechanism