ENTERPRISE54 – The African Management Initiative (AMI) which received a $750,000 investment last week, has launched the first series of online courses developed in collaboration with three top African business schools to reach one million African entrepreneurs and managers in the next decade.

Currently reaching over 800 managers, the first course – Managing Customers and Markets – was developed by Kenya’s prestigious Strathmore Business School and is now available on AMI’s new online learning platform.

Other online courses offered by AMI include managing myself, managing rojects, managing customers, financing impacts, managing people, scaling impact, managing customers, designing for impact and managing money.

“Our courses are developed having African leaders in mind, as we even use African case studies to teach. We also focus on practical tools and our courses are accessible,” AMI Rebecca Harrison, said.

AMI has partnered with Strathmore Business School in Kenya, GIBS Business School Gordon Institute of Business Science in Pretoria University, South Africa and Lagos Business School in Nigeria, to help them develop the courses.

The AMI courses are free and participants can upgrade to gain personalized certificate on completion from AMI and its Business schools for $25. Participants access engaging video lessons supported by local case studies, practical exercises, interactive quizzes and innovative peer support system.

“A recent study shows that today more Africans are living in extreme poverty today than they used to in the 90s. We at AMI believe that Africans have more potential than what is portrayed. This is why we want to change this perspective through the online courses, to help managers and entrepreneurs. Our courses are practical and proudly African. Our platform is easy to use and can be accessed on the web and on mobile phones,” said Jonathan Cook, chairman, AMI.

The courses take approximately 30 hours. AMI also provides offline study though their Learning Labs workshops currently in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa and Ghana.

AMI is a social enterprise established in 2012 to tackle Africa’s management capacity gap, leverages technology to empower African managers and entrepreneurs through practical, accessible and locally relevant learning tools.