AUDA-NEPAD aims to contribute towards decent employment for Africa’s youth by supporting sustainable youth-owned SME’s, especially for young women. More specifically, AUDA-NEPAD seeks to contribute towards the AUC campaign by focusing on building the capacity of young entrepreneurs, engaging various stakeholders to avail sustainable financial mechanisms including the establishment of regional guarantees funds for youth and women-led SMEs.

In particular, the 100,000 SME’s for 1 million Jobs by 2021 seeks to build the capacity of 100,000 SME’s in Africa through training on entrepreneurial and business skills, to improve their access to finance, new markets whilst overall establishing networks for support and incubation to bolster their success.

Thus, the Community of Practice (CoP) represents a group of these young people, informally bound to one another through exposure to a common class of problems and the common pursuit of solutions.  The 100,000 SME’s for 1 million Jobs Community of practice is a way of developing social capital, nurturing new knowledge, stimulating innovation, and sharing knowledge on entrepreneurship on the continent, by entrepreneurs.  The community of practice knits the entrepreneurs together with their peers and their outputs are designed to include leading practices, guidelines, knowledge repositories, technical problems and solution discussions, webinars on entrepreneurship, working papers, and strategies. 

This community of practice aligns with the Human and Institutional Capabilities and the Economic Integration strategic priorities of AUDA-NEPAD and would also mutually support and benefit from the Supply Chain and Logistics Centres of Excellence, in addition to affiliated AUDA-NEPAD programmes.