10th Annual South African Ideas Festival

Founding History: Since 2011, the Bezos Scholars Program has cultivated a special and committed partnership with the African Leadership Academy (ALA). Every year, ALA collaborates with our program to select five students and one educator who are tasked with planning the annual South African Ideas Festival (SAIF). SAIF is an entrepreneurial development festival where youth convene to discuss, learn and design innovative ways to spark change in their community using social entrepreneurship.

Project Theme: Social entrepreneurship

Target Audience & Location: African youth, age 15-19, interested in social entrepreneurship. The team is based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Mission: To empower African youth to make a change in their community by teaching them the tools needed to implement sustainable social enterprises.

Project Description: Scholars Jaelene Iyman, Selima Terras, Suyash Nowbut, Saifeddine Lahmar, Panashe Jonga and their educator Scholar Ssanyu Sematimba, will host the virtual festival in collaboration with a team of over 25 student interns. This year the festival theme is “Invent to Implement”. They chose this theme because, “Building off of what was done last year, it was important to us that festival activities involved actual implementation and business development work to enable a more idea-oriented progression ensuring that every participant walks away with a clear, feasible, specific and sustainable six-month implementation plan.”

Over three weekends, 50 teenagers from more than 15 African countries will undergo training and attend sessions to learn skills needed as future entrepreneurs that include learning about conducting market research, financial planning, pitching, marketing and more. Participants will pitch their ideas and a panel of judges will select the five finalists for the final round.

Four outstanding participants in the technology field will be receiving vouchers and scholarships from GO MY CODE (a Tunisian tech company that combines coding and entrepreneurship) to attend free sessions during the summer to learn web development or application design. Four finalists will ultimately be selected and receive a scholarship from their partner The Innovations Factory (An EdTech platform that provides a portfolio of entrepreneurship courses filled with practical insight) to support the growth of festival finalists and the feasible implementation of their projects.

Watch this team’s project presentation at our virtual showcase event!