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
This course is for developers who understand the basics of programming. The course will provide the information they need to understand bitcoin, the blockchain and how to start building blockchain-based applications. It also includes examples of applications that have been built using the blockchain, in South Africa as well as internationally.
Date: 7 June, 9:00am to 3:00pm
Location: Bandwidth Barn
#TechTalkCPT: Neuroscientific marketing
The latest in this series of monthly talks will explore Neuromarketing. This is a relatively new field of marketing research that studies consumers real subconcious emotional and cognitive responses to the consumer experience.
The team from Neural Sense will hare some of the neurofeedback and biometric technologies that are used to learn why consumers make the decisions they do and to determine how the emotional drivers behind those decisions can be optimised.
Date: 8 June, 6:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: 22Seven
Product Meetup – How Product Value Proposition Drives a Startup
This edition of the meetup will host Patrick Kayton, CEO of Cognician. This talk is the story of how the product management function has evolved at Cognician and what the next steps are on its journey.
Any tech startup with a unique and potentially disruptive technology can find it a challenge to articulate a compelling value proposition. The reason is that if you are ahead of the market, you will have to do a lot of work to get noticed by your customers and to convince them to buy. Building a great product is just the start. Understanding how to take it to market and then executing your strategy is equally difficult. And this is just as much the realm of product management as it is of marketing and sales.
Date: 8 June, 6:30pm to 8:30pm
Location: Workshop 17
iXtravaganza – Professional Development
iXtravaganza is a half-day career accelerator conference designed to provide attendees with exposure to and insider tips about the hottest emerging careers. Come hear from industry experts in cutting-edge fields like iOS Development, UX Design, Data Science, Management Consulting, Finance, and Web Development. Hosted by local education start-up, iXperience, this event will reportedly “offer the chance to meet and mingle with over 100 highly talented college students from top schools across the world”.
Date: 10 June, 12:00pm to 4:00pm
Location: Workshop 17
June 2016 RailsBridge Cape Town Workshop
This event will take the form of a free one day workshop where attendees can learn some Front-end or Ruby and Rails code.
Date: 11 June, 9:00am to 5:00pm
Location: Workshop 17
Durban
Seedstars World Regional Pitching Event
As part of its expanded efforts in South Africa in 2016, emerging markets entrepreneurial conglomerate Seedstars World will be hosting an event in Durban for the first time. The Durban event will see eight startups compete for pre-selection, of which thee will advance to the grand finale in Johannesburg on 30 June.
Date: 8 June, 4:00pm to 8:00pm
Location: 26 Samora Machel St, Durban
Lagos
Unreasonable Lab Nigeria: Demo Day
This five-day accelerator is designed to help Nigeria-based ventures understand the fundraising process and be ready to take on capital investments.
Date: 10 June, 5:00pm to 10:00pm
Location: Etal Hall & Hotels
Fundable Startups Masterclass
This event is a strategic workshop intended to help participants to practically jumpstart their startup ideas the right way. According to the organisers, the event will be highly experiential so that attendees get to leave the workshop with an action plan for your startup idea.
Date: 11 June, 9:00am to 4:00pm
Location: TBC
Nairobi
Young Women Social Entrepreneurs – Nairobi June Social
This is a networking dinner aimed at Nairobi’s young female social entrepreneurs.
Date: 6 June, 7:00pm to 9:30pm
Location: Anghiti Restaurant inside New Rehema House, Westlands
Strathmore Alumni Entrepreneurs Network
Titled “Lessons from Silicon Savannah”, this is the latest in series of talks aimed at bringing together Strathmore University alumni in the entrepreneurial space.
Date: 8 June, 06:30am to 07:30am
Location: Strathmore University
After Office Hours // Law Edition with Douglas Gichuki
After Office Hours is a free bi-monthly event, where members of Nairobi Garage and innovators from around Nairobi, learn from and engage with, speakers who are exceptional in their areas of business.
The next edition will feature Douglas Gichuki, a lawyer who has worked pro bono with a number of startups.
Date: 9 June, 5:00pm to 6:00pm
Location: Nairobi Garage
Accra
Barcamp Mobex is a free networking forum bringing people together for learning, sharing, networking and mentoring. The venue will be at the Accra International Conference Centre. The theme for this year is “THE DIGITAL ECONOMY: Untapped Resource for Accelerated Economic Growth.”
Date: 9 June, 9:00am to 5:00pm
Location: Accra International Conference Centre.
