Application Opens: Oct 22nd, 2025
Application Deadline: Nov 20, 2025, by 11:59 pm EST
Finalists Notified: Nov 24, 2025
Finalist Slides Due: Dec 1, 2025, by 11:59 pm EST
Final Presentation: Dec 4, 2025
Eligibility Requirements:
Participants will present their business ideas in the form of a business pitch, and to be eligible to participate, participants must meet the following criteria.
1. The business pitch must represent the original work of the team members. The author(s) shall retain all rights to the business pitch regarding its use prior to and following the competition. The business pitch must not contain any fabricated information about (but is not limited to) the background, experience, or education of the management team, the stage of product development, product performance claims, or market survey results.
2. The competition is open to African entrepreneurs based in Africa . This must apply to at least one member of the management team, but other people may be members of the management team and participate in planning the venture. A participant may submit only one business pitch to the competition.
3. The competition is open to African entrepreneurs who have created, managed, and currently own ventures based in Africa. In other words, African entrepreneurs must have played a key role in creating the venture, have key management roles and own significant equity.
4. The competition is open to ventures with a viable business model that have been in operation for at least one year but less than five years at the time of application submission.
5. The competition is an initiative for new and upcoming African entrepreneurs on the African continent. Teams should respect the rights of their opponents. The Africa Business Club. @Kelley (ABC @Kelley) reserves the right to disqualify teams who act unprofessionally.
Guidelines:
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1. The business pitch is limited to 7 pages maximum (12-point font) of text, excluding the cover page, title page, and exhibits.
2. All eligibility criteria can be reviewed by ABC @Kelley on a case-by-case basis for exceptions.
Business Pitch Format:
Purpose of the business pitch: After reading the business pitch, the reader should be able to understand the business idea. The business pitch will be evaluated based on three main factors:
1. Uniqueness of business idea
2. Clarity of the business idea
3. Viability of the business.
Instructions:
Please answer the questions below in the appendix. You have flexibility in how you answer them, but please adhere to the page guidelines. Please give us enough information to understand your business, but please do not add filler material to fill the page..
Exhibits: you may provide exhibits (no more than 5 pages) within this document. You will NOT be evaluated on the content of the exhibits (or lack thereof); however, they may allow us to understand your pitch better. Financial statements are not required.
One final note: if this is your first time doing something like this, don’t stress about it! We’ve tried to construct it in a way that is as painless as possible. If you need any help, feel free to contact us at: chiokoro@iu.edu, cnwangel@iu.edu, kelleyafricaclub@gmail.com
Visit the official website HERE, for further information’s
