Sahara Foundation has unveiled plans to adopt the “extrapreneurship” strategy to drive integrated economic empowerment programmes. This will be achieved through strategic partnerships and support for innovative as well as scalable business ventures.
The foundation is the Corporate Responsibility vehicle of Sahara Group, Africa’s leading energy and infrastructure conglomerate with operations in eight countries across four continents.
Sahara Foundation also plans to directly impact 12,000,000 beneficiaries and also create value through the identification, development and maintenance of relevant stakeholders.
Executive Director and Co-Founder, Sahara Group, Mr. Tonye Cole, explained that the core of the extrapreneurship framework is “to produce a platform that finds, creates and connects young extrapreneurs in emerging markets.’’
He added that this would be accomplished by leveraging on Sahara Foundation’s key strength of bringing together various committed stakeholders and promoting cross- sectoral collaboration.
He explained that ‘Extrapreneurship’ involves creating value through leveraging internal and external strengths to drive cross-sectoral collaboration.
He said it is made possible by connecting the right people and organisations towards providing sustainable solutions to global social problems. Unlike entrepreneurship which focuses mainly in income generation, extraprenuership is centered on wealth creation and preservation.
In his words: “Sahara has evolved from a fledgling entrepreneurial business which began 20 years ago into a world class conglomerate with operations across the energy value chain including upstream, midstream, downstream operations.
“We have leveraged our network of committed stakeholders to expand the business, embrace opportunities and grow the franchise sustainably over the past two decades,” Cole said.
Sahara Foundation aims to drive the extrapreneurship programme through the establishment of community/academic hubs and the social media.
These platforms will provide resource materials and inspire networking and collaboration on a mass scale for local, regional, national and global beneficiaries.
Sahara will in the coming weeks unveil various projects that will kick start its extrapreneruship strategy in its locations across the globe.
