HARAMBE ENTREPRENEURSHIP ALLIANCE
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The Harambe Entrepreneurs Alliance (HEA) was founded in 2008 by Harvard Alumni, Okendo Lewis Gayle. Harambe which is Swahili for ‘working towards a common purpose’ was created to support a range of social and business ventures that aim to unlock Africa’s potential.
The Oppenheimer Generations Foundation has been a partner of the Harambe Youth Entrepreneurship Alliance (HEA) since 2020. Each year, we sponsor six entrepreneurs who are known as the Oppenheimer Knowledge Transfer Initiative (KTI) Fellows. We believe that it is important to grow entrepreneurs and their businesses as it drives job creation, ensures capital flows to the continent, develops businesses that are directly responding to African challenges and create products and services that can be exported to a global market.
These entrepreneurs have conceptualised, developed and are scaling businesses that address some of Africa’s most prominent challenges.
To date we have supported businesses that have are finding solutions for fund raising for female owned businesses, security and enterprise management solutions for businesses that operate in the informal market, locally produced beauty products, fintech solutions for small businesses, agri-tech solutions, HR solutions, and logistics.
Each year the entrepreneurs enter a year long programme that provides their businesses with the training, market access, skills development and support as well as access to capital they need to scale their operations from leading investors in China, Europe and the United States. The programme is extremely competitive and each year it receives applications from candidates who are from leading universities around the world.
Once the programme is complete they become part of the HEA alumni network, where they continue to mentor and share their experiences both from the programme and from their entrepreneurship journey with the incoming class. To date the alliance has an alumni network that is over 300 entrepreneurs strong, providing existing and incoming entrepreneurs with access to a diverse range of people, who have operations across the continent and can provide guidance on market context.
Oppenheimer Generations Foundation is proud to partner of HEA who has been recognised by the African Union, the Economist and the Vatican.
I believe in the Alliance because I was early taught that alone I can go fast, yet together we can go far.
