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 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
R-Ladies is a worldwide organisation which aims to promote gender diversity in the R community, an open source programming language. There are many other R-Ladies chapters in cities all around the world.
There will be some drinks and snacks to fuel the conversation. We will say a few words to kick off but otherwise please just come along, be brave and chat to people.
Date: 17 July, 5.30pm to 7.30pm
Location: Bandwidth Barn, Woodstock Exchange, 66 – 68 Albert Road, Woodstock
Thundafund is South Africa’s leading online Crowdfunding Café and marketplace for creatives and innovators. Through Thundafund, entrepreneurs with their respective projects and ideas can raise capital and build a supportive crowd of backers through the process of crowdfunding.
Date: 18 July 1pm to 2pm
Location: 108 Kloof Street, Gardens, Cape Town
For people working in startups, lean (startup) coffee is a weekly one hour coffee meetup that runs a mash-up of leancoffee.org with theleanstartup.com.
Date: 19 July 8.30pm to 9.30pm
Location: 1 Somerset Road, Green Point, Cape Town
Johannesburg
Code Java Cloud South Africa is a two-day conference for beginners to enterprise skilled professionals. The third annual conference has had two fantastic sold out events in Cape Town and Johannesburg. International and local speakers will cover Java, micro service and DevOps.
Date: 20 and 21 July, 7.45pm to 7.30pm
Location: The Core, The Core Shopping Centre, Leeuwkop Rd & Kikuyu Rd, Johannesburg
Durban
This week’s Startup Grind Durban features Fats Lazarides, the Founder of Ocean Basket and a serial entrepreneur. Already when he was in his twenties, Lazarides had opened and, sometimes sold off a succession of restaurants, cafés and fast food outlets. Lazarides will be joined by Ocean Basket CEO Grace Harding.
Date: 19 July, 5.30pm to 8.30pm
Location: Pavillion Hotel Durban, 15 Old Ford Road (KE Masinga), Durban
Kenya
Any entrepreneur will tell you that raising money can be the toughest part of starting your own business. Eric Osiakwan has has been helping entrepreneurs build great companies for most of his career. Join him for the Mettā MasterClass on how to raise money for your startup.
Date: 21 July, 6.30pm
Location: MettaNairobi, Belgravia Building, Sixth Floor, Suite 6A, Nairobi
Nigeria
SmartAfrican All-Sector Innovation Awards & Conference 2017
The event aims to showcase African technologies, allow innovators to meet buyers and to promote startup innovators.
Date: 19 July, 10am
Location: Programos Foundation Innovation Centre, Lagos
Ghana
The sixth Innovation Prize of Africa (IPA), together with the Second Innovation Ecosystems Connector, will be held in Accra on 17 and 18 July. The President of Ghana Nana Akufo-Addo will deliver a key address at the event.
Hosted by the African Innovation Foundation, the IPA was established in 2011 with a goal of strengthening African innovation ecosystems through supporting a culture of innovation and competitiveness, while spurring growth of innovative, market-driven African solutions to African challenges. See Ventureburn’s earlier interview with the event’s director Pauline Mujawamariya Koelbl.
Date: 17 and 18 July, 9.30am to 10pm
Location: Movenpick Ambassador Hotel, Independence Ave, Accra
