Alasan Gent Ceesay, a British-Gambian scholar and entrepreneur in the United Kingdom, shall be presiding over the 2023 Africa Together Conference as chair of the high-level event.
The international conference on Africa and global issues will be held at the University of Cambridge in England, United Kingdom.
Slated for 12 to 14 May, this year’s edition will mark the 9th Cambridge Africa Together Conference, an event that has over the years brought together African leaders and experts, including academics, innovators, policy experts, diplomats, businesspersons, young professionals and students representing several countries across the world to discuss issues concerning the African continent and wider world.
The foremost student-led conference, championed by the African Society of Cambridge University (ASCU), seeks to build an exciting interface between Africans and non-Africans in Cambridge.
The conference also creates a platform for networking and debate on issues of Pan-African importance, fosters research capacity within Africa and mentors prospective students from Africa studying at the University of Cambridge.
As an entrepreneur, Mr Ceesay founded two thriving businesses – Rahma Food Limited and RahmaTech. Rahma Food Limited, which is now multinational and present in The Gambia, Senegal, Guinea, Guinea Bissau and Mali, is a socially responsible importation and production agro-commodity multinational business, while RahmaTech is a social enterprise tech start-up that aims to provide smart tech training for the elderly and the less-able members in the UK and across the globe.
Mr Ceesay was born and raised in The Gambia but later moved to the United Kingdom as a teenager. A former soldier of the British Army, who has suffered a great ordeal from the frontlines in Afghanistan, Ceesay has defied the odds to attain a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Politics from the University of Warwick.
He is now doing his Masters of Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, one of the top three institutions of higher learning on the globe, where some of the greatest thinkers such as Sir Isaac Newton, the architect of gravity, and Charles Darwin, who developed and popularised the theory of evolution, were taught.
Moreover, Mr Ceesay, who employs more than 50 people, hopes and seeks to focus on setting up industries in The Gambia and subsequently the sub-region and Africa at large, especially in the food production sector, to contribute towards self-reliance and the socio-economic growth of The Gambia and Africa, as well as to help in tackling the serious menace of unemployment.
Thus, his efforts in Africa and in Europe have enabled him to stand out as a worthy global youth leader and has, thus, been able to participate in some of the most important global forums, such as G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors events and annual meetings of the boards of governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group.
The young British-Gambian has also met influential leaders in the international political landscape, such as US Treasury Secretary Ms Janet Yellen, German Finance Minister Dr Eva Wimmer, First Deputy Prime Minister Ms Sigrid Kaag of The Netherlands, and Ms Noor bint Ali Al Khulaif, the Finance and Sustainable Development Minister of Bahrain.
Thus, Mr Ceesay has been given the due honour to chair one of the most important global forums – The Africa Cambridge Conference – due to take place in about four days from now at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.
