Looking to get into the South African startup scene or scratch up on some of your skills? Well, you’ve come to the right place. There are loads of competitions, networking sessions and workshops happening around South Africa and the rest of the continent (namely Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana) that we’ve rounded up to make your life a bit easier.
This article is part of a weekly series that highlights all the top startup competitions, networking sessions, workshops and conferences around South Africa, and the greater region. If you have any event recommendations for us to add to the list, or next week’s, please let us know in the comments below or send us an email.
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Not all of the events are free and some will require booking in advance. Please click on the event names to find out more information.
Cape Town & Stellenbosch
Meet with Ventureburn at Workshop 17
Think your startup could change the world? Then we want to hear about it. And we’re not just talking about emails either. We want to meet you in person.
Ventureburn senior writer Stuart Thomas will be at Workshop 17 between 11:00 and 16:00 on Tuesday 19 April. If you’d like us to know about your startup, startup idea, or even just share your thoughts on the local entrepreneurial space, look for him under the Ventureburn banner.
Date: 19 April, 11:00am to 4:00pm
Location: Workshop 17
Team4Tech and Autodesk. Silicon Valley collaborators of Eduvate
Eduvate and the Greater Stellenbosch Development Trust have an ongoing collaboration with Team4Tech and Autodesk. On Tuesday, the edutech organisation and 3D design, engineering and entertainment software company will present an EdTech meetup.
Date: 19 April, 6:00pm to 8:15pm
Location: LaunchLab
THINK.Thursday – April edition
THINK.Thursday is a bi-monthly meeting on the third Thursday of the month of like-minded activators, to have energised conversations around positive change. Hosted by a young thought leader in topics in relation to environmental, social, economic or behavioural change– it is a chance to meet individuals to exchange and challenge ideas, and collaborate.
This month’s speakers are Tsakane Ngoepe and Stephanie Craig from the UCT Graduate School of Business’ Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Date: 21 April, 6:30pm to 8:30pm
Location: 75 Harrington Street
Now in its third year, the Fishackthon is asking industry experts (fisheries), coders, programmers, creative participants to come with out-the-box thinking with the purpose of developing usable technology solutions to address the problem of worldwide overfishing.
Date: 22 April 6:00pm to 24 April 4:00pm
Location: Workshop 17
Johannesburg
This is the monthly App.Clinic by JoziHub and HTXT.africa.
The app.clinic() is a face-to-face session with experienced software professionals for a unique and highly valuable code and design diagnoses that will take your app to the next level.
Date: 18 April, 6:30pm
Location: JoziHub
The latest in the Startup Thursday Series, this edition will be a masterclass on building a successful eCommerce business. Joining the class to share their personal success stories are AlphaCode Gold Member Daniel Guasco, Founder of Groupon SA and Ryan Bacher founder of NetFlorist.
Date: 21 April, 6pm to 9pm
Location: AlphaCode
The event will this Thursday host Hugh Molotsi.
Molotsi is an advisor to Eric Reis’ company Lean Startup Co. He also advises and has invested in several startups and is an active practitioner and teacher of Lean Startup Methodologies.
Date: 21 April, 6:00pm to 8:30pm
Startup Jozi will be hosting Vije Vijendranath (a.k.a. The Six Pack Dad) on 22 April 2016. He will be sharing insights on visual selling and how to use digital photography to ensure a lasting impression for businesses and startups. Attendees will also learn about the different types of visual selling and the easiest/quickest ways to get started. The presentation will be followed by a questions and answer session, after which Vije will walk attendees through some practical examples.
Date: 22 April, 6:00pm
Location: JoziHub
Jozihub Academy – ‘First Bite At Building IPhone Apps’
This design bootcamp is intended to be a bootcamp for first-time app designers. No programming experience is required.
Date: 23 April, 10am to 1:00pm
Location: Jozihub 44 Stanley
Lagos
Mobile West Africa 2016 will take place April 20th & 21st at the Wheatbaker hotel in Ikoyi. MWA delivers two days of interactive and progressive presentations, discussions, and networking and this year’s edition will also feature the region’s first mobile awards – the West Africa Mobile Awards (WAMAS).
Speakers include experts from Google, Hotels.ng, Diageo, Uber, Huawei, Eskimi, Opera, PZ Cussons, Jumia, Etisalat, and iROKO Partners. The delegation that attends MWA is made up of industry leaders and all key stakeholder groups are represented.
Date: 20 April 09:00am to 21 April at 10:00pm
Location: The Wheatbaker Lagos
G3 Mobile Games Developer Meetup – Lagos
G3 Games Developer Group is a monthly meetup for players in the local games space to foster conversations related to mobile games development in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy.
This event is designed for programmers, publishers, designers/illustrators, indie developers, storytellers, sound engineers and everyone else who is involved in the process of bringing a game to life.
Date: 20 April, 6:00pm to 8:30pm
Location: Whitespace
The MSME Fest was conceived and designed to boost the capacity of Micro Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (MSMEs) to manage their businesses, increase their productivity and create jobs in the process. The program is organized annually and has three main thrusts; Innovation in business, Performance management (as a tool for maintaining and increasing customers base), and accessing finance. Past editions have reached over 800 MSMEs in both Abuja and Port Harcourt.
Date: 23 April 9:00pm to 24 April 2:00pm
Location: Lagos Oriental Hotel
Nairobi
Nakia J. White, a leading crisis manager, will lead a discussion on scandals in the online space. The session will focus on why scandals happen, how to handle them and how to come out on the other side a winner.
Date: 19 April, 5:30pm to 7:30pm
Location: iHub
Business Breakfast – Networking with Business & Thought Leaders
The monthly Business Breakfast is a chance to sit with 19 other entrepreneurs to exchange experiences and ideas with three experienced business and thought leaders.
Date: 20 April, 7:30am to 8:30am
Location: The Hub East Africa
Pitch to The Ladykillers: test your business plan!
The Ladykillers are experienced business women and women investors. They have experience sitting in panels and judging ideas as part of pitching competitions.
If you want to get tested on your business model and strategy, why not pitch and receive brutally honest feedback helping you to take stock of where your business is at? Not as part of a competition, but just in a one-on-one setting because you want to test yourself and get better at sharing your vision.
Date: 21 April 9:00am to 11:00am
Location: The Hub East Africa
HiiL, a worldwide pioneer in building and scaling up innovative justice ecosystems, is hosting an Innovating Justice event at Strathmore University in Nairobi on the 21st of April 2016.
Date: 21 April 1:30pm to 6:30pm
Location: Strathmore University
Founder Friday Fireside Chat with Niti Bhan
Early stage venture capital firm, Nest is kicking off a new series in Nairobi dubbed Founder Friday Fireside Chats with thought leaders.
The first speaker will be Niti Bhan, an expert on Human Centered Strategy for Informal Economy.
Date: 22 April, 5:30pm to 8:30pm
Location: The Foundry – Nelleon Place, Rhapta Road
Financial Management Workshop for Starting, Growing & Scaling Entrepreneurs
The sixth in a series of 12 monthly workshops, this event will cover how daily operations translate into cash flow, profit and loss. It will also seek to answer what you should focus on to improve if your business isn’t profitable.
Date: 22 April 9:00am to 23 April 23 12:30 PM
Location: The Hub East Africa
Geek Girl Festival 2016, hosted by AkiraChix
AkiraChix is hosting its fourth annual Geek Girl Festival on Saturday 23rd April 2016
The goal of this year’s event is to:
- Inspire attendees to take up careers in technology
- Provide a platform for attendees to interact with experts in the technology industry for guidance and mentorship
- Provide practical technical skills to attendees through training sessions that will be happening during the event
- Provide a platform for sharing and learning amongst attendees
Date: 23 April 9:00am to 5:00pm
Location: iHub
