Sanergy, Sproxil, SolarNow CEOs to attend SAP Social Entrepreneur Fellowship in Silicon Valley

David Auerbach CEO of Sanergy; Ashifi Gogo, CEO of Sproxil and Willem Nolens, CEO of SolarNow, have been nominated for this year’s SAP Social Entrepreneur Fellowship, a 100-day program that centers on the development of a strategic plan for scale.

The CEOs from companies will connect with Silicon Valley leaders and investors to test and evaluate their plans, develop networks and build new tools to achieve high growth.

The SAP Social Entrepreneur Fellowship, is also a programme set to accelerate the growth of social enterprises in East Africa and India and is an initiative by Acumen. SAP and Acumen have joined forces to leverage on SAP’s technology and global business expertise, this unique collaboration will bring together Acumen entrepreneurs working in different sectors and countries to deepen their business capabilities and expand access to solutions to help them address global poverty.

The selected entrepreneurs will participate in a two-week leadership development program in Silicon Valley in July, followed by 13 weeks of mentoring and technical support in their countries. At the fellowship’s end, they will have a strategic view of growth for their companies along with a global community of social entrepreneurs, business experts and investors to help make that growth a reality.

“We see tremendous potential in this selection of entrepreneurs,” said Acumen’s East Africa Director Duncan Onyango. “Our hope is that, by leveraging SAP’s core capabilities and by utilizing their fellow CEOs as resources, this cohort of Acumen entrepreneurs will be able to not only scale their enterprises but also share best practices with others in the region to influence the overall sector and deepen their impact.”

Speaking to CIO East Africa, Ashifi Gogo, CEO Sproxil, said that this was a great opportunity for Sproxil and through the knowledge gathered at Sillicon Valley, he was looking forward to even coming up with a greater innovation to fight counterfeit products which is a headache to many businesses.

“At times the biggest challenges we face as start-ups is not finance it is advice, we lack the right advices on the way to move forward. But with this opportunity at hand to go and network and learn more at Sillicon Valley, I look forward to more and greater innovations,” he said.

During the same forum SAP and Endeavour also launched a study on skills gap that indicated that the number of entrepreneurs is growing at 20 percent or more per year and represent only five percent of Kenyan firms, but create over 70 percent of the total new jobs.

In alignment with the SAP Skills for Africa initiative, which promotes education to improve the problem of chronic youth unemployment and expand the IT workforce, SAP and Acumen today announced a strategic investment in a program for social entrepreneurs in East Africa, designed to help the companies grow and scale.