10 Aug Ambitious.Africa Meets with Finnish Foreign Trade Minister Ville Skinnari
The Ambitious.Africa team met with Finnish Minister of Development and Foreign Trade Ville Skinnari on Monday, August 10th to discuss ways of strengthening Finland’s business presence in Africa and the importance of young people working together.
On Monday afternoon the Ambitious.Africa team met with Finnish Minister of Development and Foreign Trade Ville Skinnari to discuss continued collaboration with the initiative and strengthening Finland’s presence in Africa. Ville Skinnari has been engaged in the initiative from the beginning and participated in over half of the online events that have been held so far.
During the meeting they talked about the initiative’s progress during the past three months, which they concluded has been successful. The initiative has been established in 21 African countries during the time period. They agreed Finland’s work in Africa must combine development work with business in order to help spark mutually beneficial partnerships between young entrepreneurs in Africa and the Nordics.
Together with the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the initiative plans to cooperate with local embassies in Africa and create an Ambitious.Africa presence in each office. The aim is to maximise the impact of collaboration between the Nordics and Africa and bring more young people together to spark business innovation. The embassy hubs will be called ‘Ambitious Corners’.
Participants from the Ambitious.Africa team included Maija Luukka, Vincent Forsman, Peter Vesterbacka and Ronny Eriksson, Sanna Lukander (CEO Fun Academy), and advisor to the initiative Jussi Hinkanen (CEO of East African career app Fuzu).
“I’m excited to promote our common work together. Finland’s Africa strategy will be based on mutual partnership. We will work closely with Jutta Urpilainen and the EU. We look forward to sharing more of Finland’s strategic work within entrepreneurship and education with Africa.”