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
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: 25 July, 2pm to 3pm
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: 26 July, 8.30am to 9.30am
Location: 1 Somerset Road, Green Point, Cape Town
Two of South Africa’s most exciting startups will feature in this week’s continuation of the inspire and empower series with the focus on entrepreneurship. Aisha Pandor CEO of SweepSouth, an on-demand cleaning service and Michael Deon, CEO of Augmentors Game, the first Blockchain-based augmented reality game in existence, will unpack what it means to run a startup in today’s economy.
Date: 27 July, 6pm to 8.30pm
Location: Workshop 17, 17 Dock Road The Watershed, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town
THINK.Thursday is a meeting of individuals who are passionate about positive change. It is an opportunity for you to meet like-minded individuals, to exchange and challenge ideas and to find opportunities to collaborate.
This week’s event is led by a talk by Danai Musandu, an investment associate at Goodwell Investments who believes in local solutions for local problems. She is passionate about reconstructing the African concept through innovation and social change and through entrepreneurship for the masses.
Date: 27 July, 6.30pm to 8.30pm
Location: 75 Harrington Street, Cape Town
Malva Academy: Business in a Box
Learn how to sell your service offerings online. This hands-on workshop hosted by Malva creator, Lauren Wallett will teach you how to develop and define your brand concept, take it to market and build a community to get sales and more.
Date: 29 July, 8.30pm to 6pm
Location: Workshop 17, 17 Dock Road The Watershed, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town
Johannesburg
This week’s Startup Grind Johannesburg features Anish Shivdasani, co-founder and CEO of Giraffe, an automated mobile recruitment app giving medium-skilled jobseekers access to opportunities for free. Giraffe won the Seedstar World award for Best Global Startup 2016 and has in the past year received funding from the Omidyar Network.
Date: 25 July, 5.30pm to 8.30pm
Location: Standard Bank Incubator Rosebank, 5 Cradock Avenue, Johannesburg
Venture Network South Africa Pitch Night
Innovative startups, ambitious entrepreneurs and influential investors all under one roof for a night of pitches, demos and networking.
Date: 26 July, 6pm
Location: Open, 138 West Street, Sandton.
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: 26 July, 7.30am to 8.30am
Location: Proof Café, West Street , Sandton, Johannesburg
Four concurrent speaking and workshop areas will bring together executives of JSE-listed businesses, investment industry gurus, analysts, entrepreneurs and property industry experts. Interact with exhibitors sharing the latest in financial services offerings and find out how you can unlock your personal wealth.
Date: 28 and 29 July, 9am to 4pm
Location: The Pavilion, Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg
Kenya
This week the focus will be on fintech. Business experts will explore the hype around it and explore how it will impact the way we do business. The guest speaker for this event will be Apollo Eric, CEO of Point50Capital.
Date: 24 July, 1pm to 2.30pm
Location: The Entrepreneurs Hub, Waiyaki Way, Nairobi
Spark* Kenya is part of an international non-profit that works to support emerging social entrepreneurs. 12 innovators will pitch their ventures to an invited audience of some of Nairobi’s best social enterprise leaders and investors. Audience members will be able to cast a vote for the Spark* Kenya Changemaker of the Year.
Date: 28 July, 10am to 12pm
Location: PAWA, 254, 2nd floor, Africa Alliance of YMCA’s building, State House, CRE, Nairobi
Entrepreneurs Bootcamp Nairobi
This is a platform for entrepreneurs and startups to interact, network and learn from industry experts and mentors.
Date: 29 July, 8.30am to 12.30pm
Location: 5th floor ACK Garden House, 1st Ngong Avenue, Nairobi
Developers, incubation hubs, micro, small & medium enterprises will explore how blockchain technologies can be integrated into various aspects of business to save costs, from human resources management, data back up to expense tracking and more. Speakers include Gibson Juma, CEO of Bitsoko, Alakanani Itireleng founder of the Satoshi Centre in Botswana and Felix Ugoji the creator of Kobocoin.
Date: 29 July, 8am to 8pm
Location: Moringa School, Ngong Lane, Nairobi
Nigeria
Bankole Oluwafemi from TechCabal will be hosting a meetup discussing the Open Yaba Manifesto. The Y4T meetup is a monthly peer-peer discussion meetup for members of the Yaba Tech ecosystem. The meetups are scheduled for the last Thursday of each month.
Date: 27 July, 6pm to 8pm
Location: TBA, Yaba, Lagos
Coworking Conference Nigeria will bring together entrepreneurs, innovators, service providers, operators, and policy drivers, with the aim of fostering collaboration between stakeholders to ensure sustainability and drive innovation.
Date: 27 July, 9am to 3pm
Location: The IMAX Theatre, FilmHouse, The Rock Drive, Lekki Phase 1, Lagos
This week’s Startup Grind Lagos features Phillip Kayode Moses, an entrepreneur and award winning producer. Amaka Amalu, Global COO of Tokunbo Orimobi LP will also be holding an interactive session titled “Legal issues to consider when starting a business”.
Date: 29 July, 3pm to 5pm
Location: Cranium One.1, Towry Close, off Idejo Street, Victoria Island, Lagos
Ghana
Startup Grind Networking Breakfast Accra 2017
Bring your business card to the largest business networking event where successful entrepreneurs and upcomers share knowledge,collaborate and promote each other’s business over delicious breakfast.
Date: 27 July, 8.30am to 11am
Location: Rina’s Restaurant, Oxford Street, Osu, Accra
Featured image: Robert Scoble via Flickr (CC 2.0 license BY-SA, resized)
