The Annual Africa Conference on Social Entrepreneurship (AACOSE) is a Pan-African convening that brings together and connects first and foremost practitioners and academia in the field of social entrepreneurship, leading players in these two ecosystems and key decision makers from the private and policy sectors. Convening within the nexus of academia and practitioners is unique in itself but the value the rest of the players bring into AACOSE is what makes it a real deep dive convening. The idea is to acknowledge social entrepreneurship, conceptualized it within the African context, foster multi-sectoral collaborations to accelerate its growth as the foundation of the changemaker movement and to find ways to build and scale the next generation of solutions to Africa’s challenges.

AACOSE is convened by the Institute of Social Transformation (IST) at Tangaza University College and Ashoka East Africa. IST is providing competence based training to budding and established social entrepreneurs, training them and enabling them to impact and transform the lives of people while Ashoka is credited globally for conceiving the fields of social entrepreneurship and the concept of changemaking.

Like in the previous FOUR editions, this hybrid 5th edition will bring together social entrepreneurs, academicians, researchers and research institutions, impact enablers, funders (grant makers and investors), private sector leaders, policy makers and youth changemakers among others.