Applications for the Anzisha 2026 Fellowship are open, following the conclusion of the 2025 Entrepreneurship Education in Africa Summit.
The Fellowship backs Africa’s youngest founders with venture-building support, coaching and a continent-wide peer community to help them build their leadership skills, scale their businesses and create jobs.
The summit, hosted at the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, brought together educators, policymakers, investors and business leaders to reflect on best practices in entrepreneurship education.
The day closed with the Anzisha Awards Gala, where four outstanding entrepreneurs under the age of 25 were recognised for their achievements and each awarded $10 000.
Cebolenkosi Gcabashe (22), founder of G Khula Trading in KwaZulu-Natal, won the Revenue Growth Award after building a profitable property services company from a single high-pressure cleaner.
The gala also honoured Nigeria’s Bunmi Esther Olalude with the Job Creation Award for empowering women and youth; Zimbabwe’s Tafadzwa Manyanye with the Systems of Delivery Award for building efficient agricultural services; and Nigeria’s Christianah Madu, who received the Storytelling Award for raising the visibility of her venture through communication.
Anzisha managing editor Didi Onwu urges stakeholders to rethink how they approach entrepreneurship: “Youth entrepreneurship isn’t the backup plan, it’s the blueprint. For too long, we have treated entrepreneurship as plan B, the path we take when ‘the real’ systems fail you. But this summit is a reminder that youth-led enterprise isn’t what happens when things go wrong, it’s what happens when young people take control of their futures.”
Since its launch in 2011, Anzisha has supported nearly 300 very young entrepreneurs across the continent.
The multi-year Anzisha Fellowship combines funding, mentorship and peer-to-peer learning to help ventures grow sustainably while creating jobs in their communities.
The 2026 Anzisha Prize Fellowship is open to applicants between the ages of 15 to 22 who are running ventures in Africa.
Successful applicants will join a growing network of innovators and compete for a shared prize pool of $50 000.