Looking to get into the South African startup scene or catch 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 them 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
Webinar: Developing a Marketing Strategy
This webinar will assist entrepreneurs in developing a functional marketing strategy for their businesses, essentially covering all the necessary basics of how to market correctly.
Date: 17 May, 12pm to 12:30pm
Location: North Block, Upper Eastside, 31 Brickfield Road, Woodstock, Cape Town.
Monthly Information session for product inventors and innovators
This meetup is for anyone interested in innovation and product design. The speaker, business mentor Bruce Wade, will take you through a product development roadmap and answer any questions you have.
Date: 17 May, 6pm till late
Location: North Block, Upper Eastside, 31 Brickfield Road, Woodstock, Cape Town.
Heavy Chef Events: Bootstrap Bootcamp
This event will help young businesses set up and run at a cost effective rate. The bootcamp will be facilitated by Heavy Chef CEO Fred Roed and ArtisansInAfrica CEO Caley van der Kolk.
Date: 17 May, 6pm to 9pm
Location: World Wide Creative, 62 Sir Lowry Road, Cape Town.
Venture Incubation Programme (VIP) Winter School Info Session
This information session which will inform participants of the type of founders the programme is looking for as well as how to test ideas, how to apply to VIP and what the programme will entail.
Date: 17 May, 5:30pm to 7pm
Location: UCT Graduate School of Business, Solution Space, 9 Portswood Road, Green Point, Cape Town
FuckUp Nights Cape Town #sharethefailure
Join others as entrepreneurs share their failures and gain some sort of knowledge on what not to do when starting or growing your business.
Date: 18 May, 6:15pm to 9:15pm
Location: Canterbury Club, 46a Canterbury Street, Zonnebloem, Cape Town.
The lean in breakfast will allow female entrepreneurs to share, listen and follow the experiences of other inspirational female entrepreneurs. The event will be hosted by Melanie Hawken, the founder of Lionesses Africa and Kabelo Matlala from the Standard Bank Incubator.
Date: 19 May, 8:30am to 11:30am
Location: Workshop 17, 17 Dock Road, Waterfront, Cape Town
Each meetup is focused on various solutions that can be implemented to bolster the growth of black entrepreneurs in SA. The meetup will hope, in the long run, to provide advice, mentorship and access to resources for black entrepreneurs.
Date: 20 May, 1pm to 2:30pm
Location: Baxter Theatre, coffee shop, Main Rd, Rondebosch, Cape Town.
Johannesburg
Is a standard networking event for business leaders and entrepreneurs. The network is searching for professionals in various industries and fields. However, you must inform the organiser of the field you’re in before joining the meeting.
Date: 17 May, 8:30am till late
Location: The Street Cafe, 40 St Andrews Road, Johannesburg.
Lean Coffee takes the form of a relaxed networking event where the topics and solutions that get discussed are decided by the participants.
Date: 17 May, 7:30am till late
Location: Father Coffee, The Zone, Rosebank, Johannesburg.
Small business networking – Imbizo
Th Imbizo will allow other small and medium business owners to interact and collaborate on certain ideas and issues facing their businesses.
Date: 19 May, 9am to 11am
Location: 252A Montrose Ave, Northriding, Randburg.
Standard Bank FemTech Hackathon
This event is a 24-hour challenge for women in the tech sector to identify and digitise initiatives that tackle the township economy, the financial sector and the education sector.
Date: 19 May, 4pm till late
Location: Standard Bank Incubator, Rosebank, 5 Cradock Avenue, Johannesburg.
Kenya
Strathmore (ISBI) Entrepreneurship Workshop
This workshop is a simulation of the Strathmore ISBI Advanced Entrepreneurship Programme, allowing entrepreneurs to experience the programme before fully becoming a part of it.
Date: 19 May, 9:15am to 1pm
Location: Strathmore Business School, Ole Sangale Road, Nairobi City, Nairobi.
Attendees will discuss the impact of AfriStack’s 2016 women entrepreneurship workshop in addition to being introduced to Javascript programming.
Date: 20 May, 10am to 1pm
Location: USIU Africa, on Thika Rd, Freida Brown Student Center, Nairobi.
Nigeria
Will cover how to create and manage your brand ethically, logo creation as well as how to target market optimisation. The event will also cover how to boost your sales skills and tools.
Date: 16 May, 10am till late
Location: The office place, 5th avenue, N close, House 3, FESTAC TOW, Lagos
Will cover the multiple ways you can successfully work your brand such as the various ways you can position your brand, how to grow your brand awareness etc. The event will be hosted by Shola Adekoya, the lead brand consultant at Brand Wisely.
Date: 17 May, 11am to 2pm
Location: The Plectrum Hub, 10 Omotayo Ojo Street, Off Allen Avenue, Ikeja, Lagos.
This event is being held to celebrate the launch of two new accelerator programmes, XL Africa and SLA Africa where VC4A is recognised as a partner and implementer.
Date: 17 May, 6pm to 10pm
Location: Cafe Neo / Cre8, 6 Agoro Odiyan Street, Eti-Osa, Lagos.
How to start your profitable Travel Agency
This event will aim to teach participants on how to run and grow a profitable travel agency through a three-day course which covers: starting up a travel agency, flight reservations and ticketing, and tour planning.
Date: 18 May, 10am to 5pm
Location: Workbay, Bayo Dejonwo Street, Maryland Estate, Maryland, Lagos.
The Entrepreneurial Empowerment Summit
The summit will aim to upskill young entrepreneurs, improve productivity as well as create a platform for veteran entrepreneurs to share their experiences.
Date: 20 May, 1pm to 5pm
Location: Fountain of Life Sanctuary, Ladipo Oluwole Avenue, 1 Ladipo Oluwole Street Ikeja, Lagos.
Have a startup event that you’d like featured on next week’s event roundup? Send us an email
