Services
Our service formats: Trainer of Trainers, Business Start-up Summer Schools, Business Idea Competitions, Coaching and Mentoring workshops and Entrepreneurship Conferences.
Entrepreneurship Education Promotion in Africa Universities
AGEA offers training programs for entrepreneurship facilitators in our partner higher educational institutions in Africa. The program is based on a concept for the establishment of university-based entrepreneurship promotion. Offers include capacity building to establish entrepreneurship and incubation centres, curricular development for entrepreneurship and innovation management, and trainers’ training, among others. We introduce well-tested coaching tools and mentoring approaches to support start-ups that emerge from academic research and teaching. The Self Management Initiative Leipzig (SMILE), the entrepreneurship promotion initiative at Leipzig University, has applied these tools in its training and has effectively assisted the founding of over 600 Start-ups in Germany over the last 15 years. SMILE is an invaluable resource capacity available to AGEA for supporting entrepreneurship development in Germany and Africa.
Explore our entrepreneurship promotion training manuals on the Resources page.
Promoting African Start-ups
Promising business start-up projects are identified and supported through our business idea competitions, entrepreneurship training and workshops and partner project activities. Through our network of experienced coaches and mentors, AGEA matches the start-up projects with interested coaches and mentors with the experience and expertise to improve the project ideas and move it to the required next development stage (prototyping, marketing analysis, market-entry, etc.). The current flagship activity in this service offering is the AGEA Start-up Class.
Explore our Success Stories for more information on some successful businesses supported.
AGEA Business Idea Competition
The AGEA Business Idea Competition has provided students and alumni in partner universities with an opportunity to develop their entrepreneurial ideas. It served as a platform for many young Africans to kickstart their entrepreneurial journeys as it aims to discover promising problem-solving business ideas generated by young African students and contribute to nurturing these ideas for the market.
Since the 2021 edition, the AGEA Business Idea Competition is focussed on research-based or spin-off start-up projects. These are business ideas that have been generated from the results of research conducted by researchers, professors, lecturers and students (Masters and PhDs) at African universities. The aim is to provide a platform that supports the transformation and commercialisation of academic and scientific knowledge as products and/or services for the market.
Interested applicants will have the chance to share their ideas, prototypes or product models, where available. A selected team evaluates the submissions based on the set criteria, and a final shortlist of 6 to 10 is made. The competition winners are selected through a jury decision or by public voting on the final event day which is usually organised online.
Details of the process will be announced each year on this website. Explore the AGEA Business Idea Competition 2020 and 2021 and relive the moments of the online final events.
Support for Africa-oriented Start‑ups in Germany
Through the SMILE incubator initiative, German start-ups developed for African markets are supported to develop competitive business models. The businesses are registered in both Germany and the target African country. Support includes training, coaching and mentoring entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship promotion in Germany.
Explore our Success Stories for more information on some successful businesses supported.
