Ambitious.Africa’s annual report 20/21: the rocky road to success
2021 closes off the two-year mark since the beginning of Ambitious.Africa’s ‘small’ venture with the big ambition to drive collaborative change between the African continent and the Nordics. Since the turn of the year, the organization has seen more success across all sectors of its operation.
Growing from the uncertainty and challenges faced in the initial ‘experimental’ year of operation has seen a theoretical shift in our view of change and how we ultimately achieve it. Emulating the trial and error system of the start-up ecosystem has resulted in laying the foundations to best deliver youth-driven initiatives. We have been able to create well-structured and coherent communication across borders and among teams based in 10+ countries across Africa and the Nordics with evaluation tools in place to measure our impact.
A key starting point in achieving this that we will carry into the upcoming year will be a vast reduction in the projects we have and will be engaged in. This will allow for higher quality engagement, driving our focus to achieve more scalability in our projects in the future.
Through the persistence of the Partnerships Team, our ability to connect has not only allowed us to see an increase in partnerships, with major backers such as Wärtsilä and other government organizations, start-ups, and top universities, but has also shown an expansion of our volunteer network, with the help of the recruitment platform, Teamtailor.
Other teams, such as the Media Team, have taken shape over the course of the year growing from what was a team of four to almost doubling in size and having more structured roles within their team to achieve more directed output. The year also brought on the establishment of the Finance Department as well as the specialized Grants Team whose focus is to secure operational and project funding through successful grant applications.
With this momentum, the 2021/22 calendar year will bring forth exciting changes in our approach, clarity in our objectives, and some new tools such as the A.A Online Platform that will be a networking space between students, universities, organizations, and businesses.
Full report:
