The Africa Social Impact Summit was hosted by Sterling One foundation at the Eko convention center in Lagos, Nigeria. The 2 day event held on the 10th and 11th of August and was centered around mobilizing capital into Africa, and positioning the African socio eco system for sustainable outcomes and drive growth in the creative economy. The event was opened by the compere who welcomed participants and gave an overview of what to expect from the session and then proceeded to introduce the first speaker Connie Nielson, the President of the Human Needs Project.
She spoke on the work her organization had done in Sub Saharan Africa; which was to equip unemployed but talented young people with entrepreneurial skills to create a network of opportunities to drive empowerment and financial sustainability. Her organization has set up bottling plants and mini power grids the ownership and operation of which are transferred to locals after initial overhead costs are recovered. The next speaker, Adam Isheyr, the global head of commercial partnerships,KPMG, was then introduced. He gave a talk on the importance of business ecosystems and the potential they hold in an ever fluid world. He also spoke on the need for larger corporations to view themselves as larger ecosystems and need to ensure that they are positions for social impact and sustainability. Up next, a message from the former president of Malawi, Joyce Banda, who is also the chairperson of the Pan Africa Climate Justice Alliance was played. She spoke on climate change and its impact in Africa and also reiterated the commitment of Trans continental leadership to driving change. After this, the panel session commenced. The session was centered around scaling funding for health models in Africa. The session was anchored by Toyin Adegbite. The panelists were Odunayo Sanya , the secretary of the MTN foundation, Naomi Aduyi, the Managing Director, Bastion HMO and Dr Morris the director of the Dangote foundation. The conversations were centered around treating the health sector like every other sector in the economy. They also spoke about the need for multisectoral collaboration to drive growth in the health sector and consequently improve the health care value chain. At the end of the session, there were questions centered around how to integrate stakeholders feedback in driving sustainability in health care services, the impact of technology in the health care sector and how non health care stakeholders can contribute to the sector. At this juncture , the 20 minute tea break commenced. Upon resumption, the next Naomi Nwokolo , the executive director of the United Nations Global Compact Network Nigeria, a country office of the United Nations spoke on water sustainability and how that has been impacted by climate change and how each individual has a role to play in ensuring the proper management of water resources. She also spoke about the importance of sensitisation , so we are all equipped to drive change. Up next, was a fire side chat hosted by Ngozi Chukwu from Big Cabal tech, and the speaker was Mr Iyin Aboyeji, the founder of The Future Africa and the co-founder of Andela and Flutterwave who spoke on his start up journey and the challenges faced This signaled the end of conversations in the session. The event was laced with profound knowledge and insight. Kudos to Sterling One foundation for this revolutionizing event. Source: Sterling One Foundation
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