Serial tech
entrepreneur and software developer, Chidi Nwaogu, has been announced as one of the laureates of the French-African Young Leaders 2021. This year, many took a chance, with nearly 3,000 applications received. However, the French-African Foundation had to select only 100 laureates from the very high quality of profiles it received.
According to the Foundation, “the choice of our 100 laureates was particularly difficult.” However, on the 30th of July, the French-African Foundation welcomed Chidi Nwaogu and other selected Young Leaders to the Young Leaders program, which aims to develop their leadership skills, exchange with senior leaders from the public, and private sectors, and together, propose a reflection on key themes.
The French-African Foundation aims to identify, bring together, and promote the most promising talents on the French and African economic, political, academic, social, and cultural scenes, and to support the leadership and management potentials of this new generation, in particular through its flagship Young Leaders program.
The program brings together a class of Young Leaders, aged between 28 and 40, selected from among the most promising potentials and called upon to play an important role in relations between France and Africa. The composition of the new class of Young Leaders was made public during a ceremony broadcast live on social media. The 100 selected profiles, which respect strict parity, are notable for their sectorial and geographical diversity.
This year’s class of Young Leaders includes innovative sectors such as legal tech and
entrepreneurship linked to environmental issues. Of this contingent, 25 African nations are represented, in addition to France. Of this year’s class, 35 percent of the laureates are binationals, while 65 percent are nationals, with a common feature of working across France and Africa.
Apart from France, the countries with the most laureates for this year are Nigeria, Benin, and Senegal, with 9, 7, and 6 laureates respectively, with the average age of the laureates being 34.5 years.
Chidi Nwaogu is a serial tech entrepreneur and software developer. He is the co-founder and CEO of Publiseer, a digital publisher that has helped over 6,000 underserved African creatives living in low-income and disadvantaged communities to earn a living from their creative works, and has been described by Konbini as “one of the largest digital publishers in Africa” and identified by IFC as one of the startups “that could speed up innovation in Africa”.
He is also the co-founder at Savvy, a global fellowship program that has equipped over 4,000 passionate and brilliant young individuals from 136 countries, with the necessary knowledge, skills, resources, tools, and community that they need to start their own impact-driven business in a post-COVID era and succeed as social entrepreneurs.
Nwaogu is the winner of the Migration Entrepreneurship Prize 2020, the Africa 35.35 Award 2019 for Entrepreneurship, the Young Leaders Award 2019 for Media and Entertainment, and the Bizz Business Excellence Award 2019.
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