Rwanda's Think incubator is calling for tech startups to join its six-month accelerator programme in Kigali. This comes at the back of thefirst in-take of the Millicom and Tigo Rwanda-backed entrepreneurship programme that seeks to support startups developing digital solutions for Africa. Similar to last year's in-take the pan-African initiative will select five companies that will have access to investment from Millicom, training, professional coaching, resources and so on. After the six month incubation process companies are expected to have ...

South African entrepreneurial school Seed Academy has launched a startup survey which gives participants the chance to win one of three places at Seed Academy’s entrepreneur training programme valued at R48 000. “Whilst more funding and opportunities are available for startups, we need to benchmark where we are and which areas need improvement – we have therefore developed South Africa’s first start up survey,” says Jeff Miller, non-executive chairman of Seed Academy. Read more: The state of South Africa’s tech startup industry ...

Confidence is a precious thing in business. Having the confidence to succeed, the belief in yourself that your ideas will work and the drive to turn those ideas into reality are key traits of the high-achieving entrepreneur. But how confident can someone be when they confront new strategies for growth or realise that they are going to have to try something different to help them succeed in their role? Where can they turn to for advice and guidance? For me this is ...

Solar energy in Africa is really hip and happening. The pay-as-you-go solar energy startup from Kenya, M-Kopa, has just won the 2015 Zayed Future Energy Prize worth US$1.5-million. Jesse Moore, Managing Director and Co-Founder of M-Kopa Solar says that the company is soon to power over a million homes living off-the-grid: We are honoured to win the Zayed Future Energy Prize. The prize brings global attention to M-KOPA Solar’s business model, which has brought clean, affordable solar power to 150 000 homes ...

Andy Hadfield, founder of the now defunct wine rating startup Real Time Wine, has announced his newest venture: a social impact startup called forgood. The project, which has been in "stealth mode" since November 2014, allows people to volunteer their time or donate food, clothes and money to an organisation which they feel needs it or to create their own cause which would benefit from donations. According to a post on Hadfield's blog, he's stepped into the CEO role at the ...

Fresh ecommerce stats from Statista.com show that 40% of worldwide internet users have bought products or goods online via desktop, mobile, tablet or other online devices. This amounts to more than 1 billion online buyers and is projected to grow steadily. The boom in global online shopping comes off the back of innovative encryption and continuous security upgrades by leading payment gateway providers. eMarketer also estimates that business-to-consumer (B2C) ecommerce sales worldwide will reach US$1.92-trillion in 2016. The African region’s impressive ...

There are plenty of exciting entrepreneurs in Africa trying to kickstart education systems through affordable education, interactive games, online content and digital career discovery platforms. That level of entrepreneurship is being matched by interest from international investors. One such investor, Pearson, recently concluded its Edupreneurship Programme -- an attempt to help these startups scale effectively. Two of the continent's top edupreneurs -- Tanzanian-based, Ubongo, and Lekki Peninsula Affordable Schools from Nigeria -- were awarded by the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund ...

It was only a matter of time before Uber unleashed its East African chapter. The US$40-billion worth taxi company is finally about to show face in Kenya's Nairobi. After first touching down in Johannesburg, South Africa and then Lagos, Nigeria, the popular Uber is definitely clear about making inroads into Africa's fast-expanding cities -- and the whole world for that matter. So far, the San Francisco-based hotshot is operating in over 250 cities across the globe. That's 190 more than it had ...

When you think about Africa, foreign kids traveling to the continent to learn how to code isn't the first thing that comes to mind. Well, this didn't stop Aaron Fuchs and his team from setting up a business doing exactly that. In fact, this focus has given them an advantage. Not only does summer tech academy iXperience have the advantage of earning dollars while running a business in rands, it's also found the ability to blend a world-class educational product ...

The shutdown of Woza, Google's free website service, earlier this week was big news. Understandably so too: the service, which launched in early 2012 was designed to give businesses “the opportunity to create their own websites… and develop an online presence — for free, and in under an hour”. And, in that time, it was reportedly used to create around 40 000 websites. Now a South African startup is looking to fill the void it's left behind. VIGO, a Cape ...