There are different types of women in business: The mompreneur who works from home and balances the demands of a growing business with that of their household, kids and husband. The solopreneur who works from home, refusing to hire and manage staff - they work with a slew of freelancers or consult or freelance themselves. The entrepreneur who has staff and is trying to grow a business from strength-to-strength with or without the challenges of a family thrown on top of things. As a ...

Startup 90, one of many South African accelerators on a mission to find the startup recipe for success, has revealed its cohort of eight tech startups for this year. From free parking to service delivery and mobile shopping, each of the eight startups aims to use web and mobile technologies to solve social and economic challenges in Africa. Sandheep Ramluckan, the founder of Startup 90, notes that a total of 86 applications have been received this year: We are really encouraged by the ...

This week, Lagos will host its third annual Social Media Week. Last year, it featured a Battlefield startup competition that was won by educational portal PrepClass. The startup was also named one of the Top Ten Most Innovative Companies in Africa for 2014 by FastCompany. Meanwhile, a few weeks ago one of Nigeria’s major telecoms companies, Airtel, announced the winners of its Catapult A Startup competition. One of them is Pass.ng, an online exams preparatory platform that helps students prepare for ...

Fellow entrepreneurs tell you what not to sweat over -- from obsessing over social media followers to being a perfectionist! Paying attention to the hype “Although it might sound funny in this context, chasing press is often a place where new entrepreneurs spend too much of their time. If you spend the majority of your time reading the news and bemoaning your lack of press in the buzzy blogs for your industry, you’re almost certainly not really focussed on making the news ...

International Women's Day is just around the corner (8 March). To celebrate, Google South Africa is inviting women entrepreneurs to apply for a Digital Business Manager workshop. The free two-day course is geared for women who want to learn more about how to best utilise the internet to grow their business ventures. The workshop which will be held in Johannesburg over the 10th and 11th of March will focus on creating a successful web presence, how to market your business using ...

Co-founder of OpenTenders Madoda Khuzwayo estimates that there are as much as R1.3-trillion worth of tenders being procured by government entities every year. However staggering and wonderful that figure may sound, a honey pot of this magnitude does not remain untainted. Fraud and negligence are common issues when it comes to government or big corporates putting out contracts in South Africa. "If you have half a trillion [rands worth of] of work that government is procuring, you need to make sure that ...

In preparation for the SME Survey 2015, marketing director of World Wide Worx Arthur Goldstuck is expecting a real take-up of cloud services among Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in South Africa this year. The survey, which is said to be the largest representative survey of SMEs in South Africa since 2003, highlights the importance of small business in the local economy, noting the importance of having all IT options available to them. “We are definitely noticing a trend that sees SMEs ...

As an American tech journalist who transplanted herself to Cape Town a year and a half ago, I get asked one question all the time: how do we compare to Silicon Valley? Now that I’ve travelled to Africa’s main tech hubs, interviewed dozens of entrepreneurs, tech execs, and investors and founded my own startup, CodeX, to train 100 000 coders in the next decade, I’m going to come out and say it. There is no comparison. So stop making it. But before ...

One of Africa's top business schools, the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB), and major telecom MTN have announced a multi-million rand partnership that would further help them catalyse innovation in emerging markets. According to the press release, MTN Group is dedicating R15-million over the next three years in the university's local innovation hub, the MTN Solution Space. Backed by the UCT Vice Chancellor’s Strategic Fund, The Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship as well as ...

Can purpose-built technology cities turn regions in emerging economies into the next Silicon Valley? This is what some may be asking after plans by Russia and now Kenya to boost their startup scenes through massive hub cities have recently come under fire. In December critics told the UK’s Guardian newspaper that Kenya’s Konza Techno City, a planned US$14-billion techno city, won’t solve financing problems facing the country’s rising tech scene. The city, which the Kenyan government believes can serve as a hub for the east African technology ...