Finalist

Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program of the Year Award

The E4Impact MBA for job creators

Finalist of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program of the Year Award

"An MBA for job creators, not for job seekers."


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Summary

E4Impact is a young and dynamic organization that was born in 2010 as an initiative of ALTIS, the Graduate School Business and Society of the Catholic University of Milan. In 2015 it was spun off to set up a Foundation dedicated exclusively to training entrepreneurs in Africa with the aim of creating a new generation of impact entrepreneurs offering sustainable and decent jobs.

Faithful to its motto “We do not teach entrepreneurship, we train impact entrepreneurs”, E4Impact places itself at the service of start-up companies in Africa with its unique Global MBA in Impact Entrepreneurship. The program’s innovative approach stands on its partnership model based on the involvement of African Universities that brought in 2019 to the establishment of the E4Impact University Alliance. There is no other European organization that gathers so many African Universities with the aim of enhancing the capabilities of the local faculties on sustainability and entrepreneurship issues and offering a course that embeds academic rigor and a process of acceleration for the enterprises.

Another key element of the MBA concerns its target, as it is not addressed to job seekers but to jobs creators. E4Impact supports business owners or potential entrepreneurs in transforming a business idea into a successful business model and plan; developing the skills necessary to lead a new business or grow an existing one and in joining a network of partners and investors.

To date the Foundation has generated a significative impact on the lives of nearly 6.000 entrepreneurs across Africa.

Key People


Prof. Mario Molteni
CEO
Operational headquarter, Milan,  E4Impact Foundation



Prof. Frank Cinque
General Director
Operational headquarter, Milan,  E4Impact Foundation



Dr. Fabio Petroni
Director of Programs
Operational headquarter, Milan,  E4Impact Foundation



Dr. David Cheboryot
Manager East Africa
Entrepreneurship Center, Nairobi,  E4Impact Foundation



Dr. Flavien Tchamdjeu
Francophone Africa Manager
Entrepreneurship Center, Douala,  E4Impact Foundation



Dr. Bertha Ndlovu
Southern Africa Area Manager
Entrepreneurship Center, Harare,  E4Impact Foundation



Dr. Jessica Vaghi
Communications Manager
Operational headquarter, Milan,  E4Impact Foundation



Dr. Erica Negro
Impact Measurement Manager
Operational headquarter, Milan,  E4Impact Foundation


Images

Our MBA entrepreneurs' graduation in Zimbabwe

E4Impact Alliance launch in Milan

Camerounian class of entrepreneurs after a bootcamp

A moment of training to the University Business Coach in Ethiopia

Impact Entrepreneurship Showcase in Kenya

Grants Awarding of entrepreneurs after the participation to the E4Impact program

Acceleration project Kickoff meeting in Kenya

Project event in Kenya

E4Impact matchmaking service between African and European companies

MBA entrepreneurs during a lesson in Congo

IMPACT STORY

Impacting lifes

Thanks the entrepreneurial competences developed along the MBA, our participants are able to improve their business performance, create new jobs and consequently generate a positive social and environmental impact on their communities.

Good examples of this impact chain are Alice Emasu and Joseph Nkandu.

Alice participated in our MBA in Uganda. She is the founder of Terrewode, a non-government organization that has led the campaign to eliminate obstetric fistula condition in Uganda. During the MBA she analysed how to take her business to the next level and connect it to a medical service. She made it in 2019, when she opened the first hospital in Uganda (and the third in Africa) dedicated to women suffering from the tragic birth injury. Terrewode Community Women’s Hospital, treats over 600 women per year and have already reintegrated 15,000 women affected by this problem, who are heavily stigmatized by the society.

Joseph participated in our MBA in Kenya. He is the founder of NUCAFE (National Union of Coffee Agribusinesses and Farm Enterprises), a sustainable market-driven system of coffee farmer organizations, which improves household incomes in 19 districts of Uganda and operates across the entire coffee value chain. During the MBA he contributed to influence the development of the first National Coffee Policy of Uganda and to improve gender relations among coffee farming household. After the MBA he was named Ashoka Fellow and Africa Agricultural Role Model. Today NUCAFE counts 213 member associations and cooperatives, 215,120 family owned farms and 1,512,210 individual farmers.

LEARNINGS

Lessons learned

The key factors of the E4Impact success in Africa are:

- The choice to work with the local Universities and partners form the beginning, for the co-design and co-development of innovative solutions, instead of imposing a pre-established model.
- The creation of a community among African Universities, in order to facilitate South-to-South cooperation. Currently the E4Impact University Alliance is composed by 24 members.
- The attention to share every best practice developed by a University with the whole system. This means that the innovation generated within a University has later become part of the entire ecosystem contributing to the improvement of quality and uniqueness of the MBA model.
- Be free from the traditional academic model (content and methodology), to give priority to the needs of entrepreneurs and their business.
In general, according to the E4Impact approach, the leadership must be participative. We must be recognized not as the “only owner”, but as the facilitator of a common adventure, which has to reach a very important purpose (in our case, the creation of impact entrepreneurs in Africa).

FUTURE PLANS

What's coming?

- The seven directly controlled units that E4Impact has in Africa are the basis to offer a broader portfolio of activities, also connecting Africa and Europe. The aim is to reach a national leadership for the E4Impact Entrepreneurship Centers in Kenya and Cameroon, while developing the 5 new offices opened in 2021 (Ethiopia, Ghana, Tunisia, Uganda, Zimbabwe).
- The E4Impact’s MBA model will be implemented in some new Countries (as Nigeria, Congo, Tanzania, Zambia) in the next years. The goal is to operate in 25 Countries by 2025.
- The creation of satellite companies, as for-profit enterprises led by third parties and participated with minority shares by the Foundation, will offer new services to our entrepreneurs such as administrative services via cloud, block chain and the B2B exchange Platform.
- To achieve its academic mission, E4Impact wants to intensify the relationships among the Universities adhering to the E4Impact Alliance, increasing the online meetings for the best practices exchange and the creation of innovative projects.
- The launch of a PhD program will have a special role in the coming years. Carried out in partnership with Uganda Martyrs University, it will offer the PhD title of Cattolica University (Milan) to 90 young African lectures for 3 editions and it will be managed mainly locally, so to limit the brain drain effect. In such a way, E4Impact will promote the creation of a community of scholars able the take a global leadership role in 3 key research fields: Entrepreneurship, Sustainability, African Management.

KEY STATISTICS

24

Number of the African Universities that are part of the E4Impact’s University Alliance

15

Number of African Countries where the MBA has been carried out to date

1.321

Number of entrepreneurs trained through the E4Impact’s MBA

33%

Percentage of women out of the total number of trained entrepreneurs

76%

Percentage of the participants’ overall satisfaction rate for the 2020/2021 MBA editions

98%

Percentage of MBA’s entrepreneurs that have increased the turnover of their businesses

89%

Percentage of MBA’s entrepreneurs that have expanded their suppliers and partners network

22%

Percentage of the MBA’s entrepreneurs that opened new branches

57%

Percentage of MBA’s participants that started a new business

100%

Percentage of the new business that are still in existence

6

Average jobs created per entrepreneur

41%

Percentage of the MBA’s entrepreneurs that had access to finance

9

Number of African Countries where multilateral projects have been implemented to date

4.383

Number of entrepreneurs trained through multilateral projects

76

Number of partners for the implementation of multilateral projects

1.559.193 €

Distributed economic value among E4Impact’s stakeholder in 2020

Triple E Awards

The Triple E Awards are a global recognition of efforts toward the quest for entrepreneurship and engagement in higher education. It is the first award to focus specifically on different dimensions of the universities' third mission. Implemented regionally, the Triple E Awards aim to foster change in universities and to emphasize their role in their communities and ecosystems.

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