The annual Allan Gray Entrepreneurship Challenge (AGEC) for schools and learners across Southern Africa has named its winners for 2025 - and this year, three Gauteng learners have come out tops among the 40 000 participants from across Southern Africa.
AGEC plays a unique role in Southern Africa by focusing on early-stage entrepreneurial exposure - targeting high school learners and sparking curiosity through fun, gamified learning. Top students get the opportunity to pitch their business ideas to a live audience, with the aim of turning their business plans into real ventures.
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The legendary business pitch competition also offered more action-packed games, prizes and opportunities for high school learners to pursue their business dreams in 2025 than ever before.
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4. Liam Heunis Stellenberg High School 11 Western Cape 37980
A unique new competition format
“With the challenge in its ninth year in 2025, the mission was to ignite entrepreneurial thinking among youth across Southern Africa in more schools, more provinces and more neighbouring countries, with exciting new additions to the competition format,” says Tolamo.
The competition’s new features included a brand-new high school game – with a deeper, scenario-based simulation that puts learners in the driver’s seat of real-world business decisions.
In addition, the competition’s Business Pitch Challenge was upgraded with a new theme, “Fix It Gen Z – Africa Edition”, to solve real Gen Z challenges like unemployment, mental health, unsafe transport, and load shedding. The competition was also made more accessible and interactive through the introduction of structured video submissions, finalist coaching sessions and live WhatsApp audience voting.
At the AGEC Summit, held on 4 October at Radisson Blu Sandton, the top 3 finalists presented their ideas to an audience of educators, partners, non-governmental organisations and government officials, before the final winners were chosen.
Celebrating 2025’s brightest young entrepreneurs
“We’d like to extend our heartfelt congratulations to all our winners this year. We would also like to congratulate our two top performing schools of 2025, Nigel High School in Gauteng and Etham College in Hilton, KwaZulu-Natal, for achieving record enrolment numbers,” says Mahlatse Tolamo, Operations Lead at the Allan Gray Entrepreneurship Challenge.
5. Pieter Wessels Stellenberg High School 11 Western Cape 37758
6. Yusheel Naidoo Sutherland High School 10 Western Cape 36832
7. Nosipho Khanyile Deutsche Schule Johannesburg 9 Gauteng 35541
8. Bojan Marovic Deutsche Schule Johannesburg 9 Gauteng 35320
9. Keshav Chetty Deutsche Schule Johannesburg 9 Gauteng 34370
10. Gilia Hutchinson Deutsche Schule Johannesburg 9 Gauteng 32034
11. William Mvula Deutsche Schule Johannesburg 9 Gauteng 31341
The popular AGEC digital platform was also made faster, smarter, more mobile-friendly, with added Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered feedback to help learners reflect on their choices.
Always-On Gaming Quests replaced once-off Mini Challenges with year-round quests. A brandnew entrepreneurship card game, the Start-Up Shuffle, was also introduced in July 2025, while the Allan Gray High School Game included a new theme called ‘FastFood Frenzy’, which focused on scaling up a small food stall to a wholesale business.
What AGEC competitors can look forward to in 2026
“Looking ahead to 2026, AGEC is gearing up for a powerful expansion through strategic partnerships that promise scale, legitimacy and deep community impact,” says Tolamo.
“By aligning with the Department of Basic Education and provincial governments, AGEC will embed seamlessly into school calendars nationwide. Teachers’ unions will help spotlight excellence with a ‘Top School’ recognition programme, while schools and educator networks will offer grassroots reach at minimal cost. Collaborations with youth NGOs and EdTech startups will fuel innovation through co-hosted micro-challenges.
We invite all our budding young entrepreneurs to enter again next year – they’ll be glad they did.”
