AFRICA BUSINESS BOOSTER: Turning On-the-Ground Realities and Voices into Business Acceleration | JICA BLUE CARAVAN @TOKYO

JICA BLUE CARAVAN brings its national tour to Tokyo Innovation Base with AFRICA BUSINESS BOOSTER, an evening focused on turning on-the-ground realities and voices from Africa into concrete business acceleration. The program opens with a talk session in which three practitioners from different vantage points, a Japanese impact-creating operator (A-GOAL), an Africa-focused startup (WASSHA), and JICA's Africa department, discuss how to start and scale a business on the continent. The second part features needs-validation pitches from three returned JICA Overseas Cooperation Volunteers who ran their own field research, reporting what worked, what did not, and where the turning points were, with feedback and Q&A from the first-part speakers. The closing networking and co-creation matching session lets attendees talk directly with speakers and returnees, each of whom posts the kind of partners they want to work with. The event is aimed at companies and new-business teams eyeing African markets, returned volunteers exploring entrepreneurship and corporate collaboration, VC and CVC professionals seeking Africa-focused startups, local-government staff, and students considering international cooperation plus business as a career path. Attendance is free with capacity for about 100 people.