By Modupe Gbadeyanka
A serial tech entrepreneur and co-founder of Publiseer and Savvy, Mr Chidi Nwaogu, has been nominated as Techpreneur of the Year at the 2021 FOYA Awards.
The event is an annual awards ceremony since 2016, which was conceived to serve the strategic objective to retain, reward, and recognize high-quality entrepreneurs and SMEs in Africa.
The nomination has thrilled Mr Nwaogu and has expressed optimism of winning the category as Publiseer, a digital content distribution company, has helped over 6,000 underserved African creatives living in low-income and disadvantaged communities to earn a living from the sales of their creative works.
The platform has been described by Konbini as “one of the largest digital publishers in Africa” and identified by IFC as one of the startups “that could speed up innovation in Africa.”
The nominee is also the co-founder and Head of Program at Savvy, a global fellowship program that has equipped over 3,900 passionate and brilliant young individuals from 136 countries, with the necessary knowledge, skills, resources, tools, and support community that they need to start their own impact-driven business in a post-COVID era and succeed as social entrepreneurs.
For his works at Publiseer, Mr Nwaogu won the 2020 Migration Entrepreneurship Prize by the Swiss Government, the 2019 Africa 35.35 Award for Entrepreneurship, the 2019 Young Leaders Award for Media and Entertainment, and the 2019 Bizz Business Excellence Award.
He is a 2020 Acumen Fellow (West Africa), 2020 Alibaba eFounders Fellow (China), 2019 Westerwelle Fellow (Germany), 2019 African Presidential Leadership Fellow (Cairo), and 2019 Yunus&Youth Fellow (New York).
FOYA Awards is designed to recognize and appreciate young founders contributing to the African continent’s economic growth while creating employment and other income-generating opportunities through entrepreneurship, thereby inspiring others to be founders in their own right.
The platform has developed into a convening agent for actors in the youthful entrepreneurship ecosystem attracting and stewarding access to relevant investors, not-for-profit leaders, influential personalities, and government officials to address everyday challenges and devise impactful, lasting solutions.
Adedapo Adesanya