Stanford Seed Announces a Scholarship Fund for Early Stage African Entrepreneurs

Seed is partnering with early stage entrepreneurs across Africa who are looking to grow their businesses by providing scholarships of up to 75 percent for the Aspire Business Growth Program

February 01, 2023

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Yaa Obenewaa Okudzeto and Built Services Consult

Yaa Obenewaa Okudzeto is the CEO of Built Services Consult, a construction firm based in Ghana, who participated in the Aspire Business Growth Program in 2022.

Seed, a Stanford Graduate School of Business-led initiative, has renewed its collaboration with the African Management Institute (AMI) in its ongoing effort to partner with entrepreneurs to help them build thriving enterprises that transform lives.

Stanford has announced a new scholarship fund for the initiative, which spans the African continent, and will now include francophone Africa. Launched in partnership with Stanford Seed in 2021, AMI’s Aspire Business Growth Program provides owners of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their senior teams with practical learning and training to power growth in their businesses. Post-program surveys show that 88 percent of graduates attribute their accelerated business growth to the program.

Yaa Obenewaa Okudzeto, CEO of Built Services Consult, a construction firm based in Ghana, participated in the Aspire program in 2022. “The program helped me realize that I’m dealing with people with different temperaments, skillsets, and different levels of adaptability. So I learned about myself through this program and learned to manage the people that I was leading, and that has been so helpful,” she says. “It also allowed me to structure my business properly and ensure that the people I was working with also got value out of the tools and the skills we were learning.”

The next cohort for the six-month, online program kicks off in March 2023, and applications are due 13 March.

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