African Union “AU Go Gal!” Innovation Initiative 2025 – YOA

Deadline: June 30, 2025

Applications are open for the AU Go Gal! Innovation Initiative 2025. The way forward for Africa lies in its youth, and particularly in empowering its younger ladies to take their rightful place on the forefront of technological, social, and financial progress.

The African Union “AU Go Gal!” Innovation Initiative is a NextGen problem focusing on younger African ladies in innovation, aged 15–25. The initiative goals to empower 20 younger African ladies innovators to develop digital and different modern, scalable, and sustainable options to key socioeconomic challenges dealing with the continent, thereby contributing to the continent’s transformative progress underneath Agenda 2063.

Specifically, these options ought to advance Women and Youth Financial and Economic Inclusion, together with improvements on enhancing younger ladies’s participation in financial determination-making processes and bettering entry, retention, and completion of ladies in schooling techniques.

Benefits

• The chosen members can be linked to mentors and business all through their innovation journey, whereas 5 finalists will obtain help and recognition.

Eligibility

Twenty (20) members, 4 (4) from every area, can be chosen based mostly on the next standards:

• Age: Participants should be younger African ladies, aged between 15 and 25.
• Languages: English and French
• Citizenship: Participants should be residents of an African Union member state, residing on the continent.
• Digital or Innovative Idea: The applicant ought to current an authentic, sensible, and scalable answer that addresses a urgent group, regional, or continental problem. The innovation needs to be within the space of Youth Financial and Economic Inclusion or women and girls’s schooling, together with improvements on enhancing younger ladies’s participation in financial determination-making processes in the direction of empowerment.
• Feasibility and Impact: The thought ought to reveal clear potential for fixing actual-world issues in Africa, with a robust deal with sustainability, scalability, and group influence. Solutions that combine social, environmental, and financial concerns are significantly helpful.
• Stage of Innovation: Whether the concept is within the conceptual part, prototype stage, or has already been examined in an actual-world setting, concepts in any respect phases are eligible.
• Commitment to Community and Societal Impact: A demonstrated dedication to fixing issues that profit the group, with a deal with underserved or marginalised populations. The challenge or innovation ought to deal with points which might be related to the native context of the participant’s home nation or area, with a imaginative and prescient for broader application throughout Africa.
• Potential for Scaling and Sustainability: Evidence that innovation will be expanded or tailored for different areas or nations. Preference can be given to tasks which have the potential to develop past a single location and contribute to broader socioeconomic improvement. The challenge ought to have a plan for lengthy-time period sustainability, both financially, socially, or environmentally. This might contain partnerships, funding methods, or self-sustaining fashions.
• Educational Background & Technical Competence: While formal schooling isn’t the only real determinant, candidates ought to reveal the flexibility to actualise their digital and modern options. Applicants with an distinctive observe report in related programs, self-studying, or experiential studying in modern-associated fields may even be thought-about.  
• Availability: A dedication and availability to totally take part in coaching, mentorship, networking occasions, and different actions organised underneath the AU Go Gal! initiative.
• Communication and Presentation Skills: The capability to current and talk innovation, its potential influence, and the lengthy-time period imaginative and prescient. This consists of the flexibility to pitch concepts to traders, stakeholders, and potential companions. Ability to put in writing clear proposals, studies, and updates. The submission ought to reveal good writing expertise by way of readability, construction, and a spotlight to element.

Application

For extra data, go to AU Go Gal! Innovation Initiative.