By Korkor Cudjoe, Senior Manager, Entrepreneurship Programme
As the year draws to a close, it offers a valuable opportunity to reflect on our achievements, insights, and challenges within the Women Creating Wealth (WCW) and Graça Machel Trust (GMT) Entrepreneurship Development Programme. These reflections not only showcase our progress but also help identify areas for growth as we look toward 2025.
Scaling with Purpose, Collaboration, and Skill
Expanding our programmes across diverse regions has been a major undertaking. The challenge has not only been reaching more entrepreneurs but ensuring the support we offer remains meaningful. Scaling requires more than just growth; it demands unwavering commitment, collaboration, and the development of the right skills to navigate the complexities of diverse entrepreneurial ecosystems. Weâve discovered that scaling is not linearâit demands flexibility, resilience, and a unified vision to drive sustainable impact.
Navigating Linguistic and Cultural Diversity
Operating across multiple countries with varying linguistic and cultural contextsâEnglish, French, and Swahiliâhas emphasised the importance of cultural alignment. While geographic expansion increases our reach, it also requires us to slow down and build tailored, localised support systems. Ensuring that entrepreneurs feel understood and supported in their native languages is crucial for long-term success. Moving forward, we hope to enhance our approach by addressing these nuances and fostering greater inclusivity in all our programmes.
The Promise and Challenges of Online Learning
Our shift to online learning has been transformative, allowing us to reach 4,000 entrepreneurs in the past 18 monthsânearly a tenfold increase from previous years. However, with this scale, weâve encountered new challenges. A dropout rate of 10â15% indicates the need for continued innovation in our online learning models. For 2025, we plan to introduce several new strategies to improve engagement and retention:
- Audio-Based Learning: Leveraging AI to provide audio versions of content, making learning more accessible and compatible with the busy lives of entrepreneurs.
- Interactive Formats: Redesigning courses with more dynamic and engaging content, such as gamification, storytelling, and real-time interaction.
- AI-Powered Translation: Using technology to seamlessly translate learning materials, ensuring broader inclusivity and accessibility across linguistic groups.
These changes aim to create a more engaging, flexible, and inclusive learning environment.
Leading with Vision: Aligning Teams for Impact
Leading a cross-border initiative requires thoughtful leadership, especially when aligning team priorities and maintaining motivation across diverse regions. Our success depends on ensuring equitable focus and consistent progress. Moving forward, we will prioritize open communication, team well-being, and continuous capacity building to align our efforts and sustain momentum.
Looking Ahead to 2025
The journey of transforming enterprise development is both inspiring and complex. As we refine our strategies, our focus for 2025 will be on deepening our impact by:
- Innovating how we deliver programmes to improve inclusivity and retention.
- Strengthening localized support systems to meet the unique needs of each region.
- Building team capacity to ensure alignment and sustained progress.
- Embracing technology as a tool for growth, while addressing its challenges.
As we enter 2025, we carry forward these lessons with renewed purpose, determined to drive greater impact, refine our approaches, and meet the evolving needs of the communities we serve. The path ahead is full of promise, and we are excited to continue breaking barriers and building wealth with resilience, innovation, and intention.
The Trust supports and mobilises civil society networks on issues of ending child marriage, ending violence against children, ending female genital mutilation and promoting childrenâs rights, to carry out advocacy and action across Africa. Special focus is placed on Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia where child marriage continues to be a problem largely driven by poverty, gender inequality, harmful traditional practices, conflict, low levels of literacy, limited opportunities for girls and weak or non-existent protective and preventive legal frameworks.
Education is a fundamental right for all children, which is also a vehicle for social, economic and political transformation in communities, countries and the African continent at large. Recent studies indicate a lack of progress in some of the critical commitments aimed at improving education quality, access, retention and achievement, particularly for girls. In most African countries, girls may face barriers to learning, especially when they reach post-primary levels of education. By implementing multi-dimensional approaches to education which includes core education, personal development, life skills and economic competencies, the Trust partners with funding partners, governments, civil societies and the private sector to improve education access.
The Nutrition and Reproductive, Maternal, New-born, Child and Adolescent Health and Nutrition, (RMNCAH+N) of the Childrenâs Rights and Development Programme aims at promoting the Global Strategy for women, children and adolescentsâ health within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda. The strategy emphasises on the importance of effective country leadership as a common factor across countries making progress in improving the health of women, children and adolescents.
Through its Early Childhood Development (ECD) plan, The Trust will seek to put into action the new science and evidence Report that was presented by Lancet Series on Good and early development – the right of every child. This will be achieved by mobilising like-minded partners to contribute in the new science and evidence to reach all young children with ECD. The Trustâs goal is to be a catalyst for doing things differently, in particular, to rid fragmentation and lack of coordination across ECD sectors. In response to evidence showing the importance of political will in turning the tide against the current poor access and quality of ECD. Even before conception, starting with a motherâs health and social economic conditions, the early years of a childâs life form a fundamental foundation that determines whether a child will survive and thrive optimally.