Three-Day Workshop Introduces Young Entrepreneurs to Market Principles in Morocco
IEEE Smart Village hosted a successful three-day workshop for aspiring STEM entrepreneurs in conjunction with the IEEE Power Africa Conference in Marrakech in November. The workshop was designed to introduce young entrepreneurs to the process of innovation, generation and protection of intellectual property, steps and knowledge needed to take an idea to the market, while also addressing UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Twenty-eight participants were selected from Cameroon, Egypt, India, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda and Tunisia.
Prior to the three-day in-person workshop, two online introductory sessions were held to orient the participants to the goals and objectives of the workshop. At the in-person sessions in Marrakech, participants were engaged in learning about market identification, business models, finance, investor expectation and communication skills.
Five teams were formed among the twenty-eight participants, and they conceived the following entrepreneurial projects:
- DIGI-GAP
- EVS – (Eco-Vital-Stats)
- Smart-Logix
- WasteToFeed
- E3-Recycles
Judges named WasteToFeed, which included Abdessadek Aaroud, Alanda KAMANA, Dorra Makhloufi, Mohamed Tarek Abdelzaher, and Lavender Ndunya, as the winner of the workshop.
Our many thanks to everyone’s help in organizing this workshop – speakers (Mr. Abdelhamid Chakiri, Ken Stauffer and Surya Raghu), the IEEE Entrepreneurship team (Thomas Monaco and Molly McCluskey) the IEEE Smart Village team (Mike Wilson) and the IEEE Tunisia representative (Amira Ouerfelli).
The next IEEE Entrepreneurship workshop is planned for Kenya in April 2024.
