This weekend Dante Disparte will be speaking at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi. The Founder and CEO at Risk Cooperative and chair of the Business Council for American Security, he will speak on the topics of innovation, navigating funding cycles and entrepreneurial hubs.

With concern to African development, Disparte considers natural resources as secondary to the potential of Africa’s 960 million citizens. By addressing challenges companies face when representing African nations, he suggests incorporating Africa’s undervalued “youth bulge” into each nation’s economy. By tapping into this massive economic opportunity, new business paradigms are more likely to be developed.

Additionally, he speaks on adopting business models that are not identical to previous development programs. He suggests initiating models that specifically cater to the individual and most pressing needs of each country to promote transnational development. Discussing successful ventures, he provides promising figures for one particular initiative:

Catalyzing the next generation of African entrepreneurs, Tony Elumelu has launched the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Program(TEEP) and seeded this initiative with $100 million of his own money. The stated goals are to raise an entire generation of pan-African entrepreneurs identifying 10,000 startups with the potential to create 1 million new jobs and $10 billion in revenues over 10 years…Guided by the experience of a successful African entrepreneur, TEEP underscores the need for a uniquely African response to market challenges and opportunities. In effect, Mr. Elumelu has triggered a necessary standards war on which model of entrepreneurship will set the African paradigm.

To learn more about Disparte’s upcoming remarks, read his post on Obama and the era of Afri-preneurship.

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