De Beers Group has been working in partnership with the Stanford Graduate School of Business since 2018 through their flagship Stanford Seed Transformation Programme, which aims to enable established African entrepreneurs to grow and scale their businesses.
The southern African Stanford Seed Transformation Programme is a key part of our efforts to support sustainable livelihoods and economic diversification beyond mining within our partner countries.
Helping the CEOs of tomorrow develop
The partnership aims to empower African business leaders to scale businesses, spark innovation, and drive economic growth that will shape future generations. Designed for CEOs and founders, the 11-month course focuses on innovation, exploring new ways of product development, and building strategies for expanding into new geographies.
109 companies completed the southern African Seed Transformation Programme between 2018 - 2024. Since participating in the programme these companies have raised over $87 million in capital, grown their revenues by a total of $172 million, creating over 3,400 new jobs.
“The Stanford Seed Programme isn’t just about you; they train your people. That was probably the single most useful part of the programme – they worked on the real-life problems in our company and took our management and leadership team with us. That was the magic for us.”
Co-Founder, Lucient Engineering, Jwaneng, Botswana
Using a combination of weeks of intensive, in-person classroom lessons, online sessions and workshops conducted at individual company premises, the programme provides management training, leadership development and networking support to help grow businesses.
It’s not only about learning opportunities – the programme also provides access to venture capital and angel investors, enabling participants to raise the funds required for future growth and development. The end result? We hope that we can play a meaningful part in driving business success and entrepreneurship across the countries in which we operate.