Ashoka East Africa and Tangaza University College, department of the Institute of Social Ministry, in collaboration with other partners, are organizing each year the Annual Africa Conference on Social Entrepreneurship (AACOSE). The conference involves plenary and breakout sessions to learn practical experiences from practitioners and theoretical analysis from academia. It also includes exhibition booths for showcasing and networking.

This year, the 6th AACOSE was held on May 10th and 11th, 2023 at Tangaza University College in Nairobi, Kenya. Themed “System Change: Transformative Social Innovations,” this year’s conference seek to build further the generative conversations that will lead to the necessary shifts needed to create an enabling environment. 

A team from Austrian Red Cross (AutRC) Delegation Office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and from Kenyan Red Cross participated the 6th AACOSE two days conference, with an aim  to share the experiences from the Skybird Programme and to get inspired by social entrepreneurs who are making a difference in their communities.

The team presented the User-Center Design Thinking approach of the Skybird Programme to the participants in one of the conference plenary sessions, focusing on the four phases of the approach that involves digging deeper in understanding the problem, defining the problem through the perspective of the user, going through the ideation process and prototyping it to bring the idea to life. 

The Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) aspect of the Skybird Programme was also shared in one of the breakout sessions. The discussion focused on tackling Diversity Equity and Inclusion challenges in East Africa through developing and adopting innovative approaches.

 

Further networking was conducted at one of the exhibition booths setup at AACOSE , where additional information regarding the Skybird Programme as well as AutRC’s REDpreneur program was provided to the exhibition booth visitors.

Below are some pictures from the two days event.