Ghana will be hosting the 8th edition of the premier pitch competition Junior Achievement (JA) Africa‘s Company of the Year (COY).
The COY is the culmination of JA’s Company Program®, which teaches introductory business to thousands of students in Africa.
The Company Program teaches students how to start their own businesses from capitalization at the beginning of the academic year, to developing and marketing a product or service and running their companies through the end of the year.
Students then compete nationally, with the winners representing their respective countries at the Africa regional level – COY.
The competition is expected to have about 60 Senior High School youth in attendance from fourteen African countries including Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Senegal, Gabon, Zambia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, to pitch and showcase their business ideas to the world.
The 3-day event will take place on 5 – 7 December, 2018 in Accra under the theme “Tech the Future by Storm” and the winner would receive $1000 towards implementing their business idea.
Speaking at the launch of the competition in Accra last week, the CEO of JA Africa, Elizabeth Elango Bintliff, said COY trained and equipped students with the entrepreneurial skills they needed to create their own jobs.
The national COY competition was held for three Senior High Schools – Labone Senior High, Accra Academy and Alpha Beta School – with Alpha Beta School emerging the winner and thus set to represent Ghana in this year’s competition.
Bintliff said the participants would pitch their business idea to a panel of judges and would present their company reports, embark on stage presentation, attend board room interview and take part in a trade fair to showcase their product.
Exposure was one challenge facing youth entrepreneurs in Africa and according to Bintliff, the programme would help students gain exposure and the financial reward for the winner would help them implement their business idea.
Aside the award for the overall winner, the teams would also be awarded in innovation, entrepreneurship, team work and financial performance.
Touching on the operations of JA Africa in Ghana, Bintliff said her outfit had trained 200 students with entrepreneurship skills across the country for the past one year.
She said plans were far advance to establish a chapter of JA in every Senior High School in the country.
By: ClaraDoku/techvoiceafrica.com
