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
The Real Story: Challenges that startups face and how to overcome them
Come see Christophe Viarnaud, founder and group chairman of technology firm The Methys Group, chat about what it is really like to build a startups, challenges that startups face and how to overcome them.
Date: 28 August, 6pm
Location: Launchlab, Hammandshand Road, Stellenbosch
Thundafund is South Africa’s leading online crowdfunding marketplace for creatives and innovators. The workshop is for anyone who wants to learn more about crowdfunding.
Date: 29 August, 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: 30 August, 8.30am to 9.30am
Location: 1 Somerset Road, Green Point, Cape Town
Startup Grind hosts Willem Van Biljon
This week’s startup grind will see the Cape Town chapter celebrate its four-year birthday with a winter party. The main speaker at the event will be Willem Van Biljon who co-founded and sold payment processing platform Mosaic Software and was part of the team that developed Amazon Web Services. Van Biljon is now the co-CEO and CTO of online retailer Takealot.
Date: 30 August, 5.30pm to 8.30pm
Location:Workshop 17, 17 Dock Road, V&A Waterfornt, Cape Town
Mercedes-Benz South Africa Innovation workshop
A group of executives from Mercedes-Benz South Africa as well as the LaunchLab team will be hosting an information seminar in Stellenbosch to engage with all interested participants and the startup community around the challenge.
Date: 31 August,11am to 1pm
Location:Nedbank Stellenbosch Univeristy LauncLab
LaunchLab Talk: Business is serious, work is fun
Herman Kriel CEO at Five Friday believes that company culture is not an HR function. Come and learn some more insights from Kriel on company culture and the recipe for success, using its ingredients: relationships, behaviours, attitudes, environment and values.
Date: 31 August, 4.30pm to 5.30pm
Location:Nedbank Stellenbosch Univeristy LauncLab
Watch women entrepreneurs who took part in 88 Business Collective’s Premium Programme pitch for funding to grow and scale their businesses.
Date: 1 September, 10am to 2pm
Location: Rise, Block B, 5th Floor, 66 Albert Street, WOodstock Exchange, Cape Town
Johannseburg
FNB Private Wealth’s head of brand Heidi Flint and Yuniya Khan, founder and director of The Emerge Project discuss the idea of giving in the age of social media and what it takes to make a business function on social media. The event is hosted by The Hook Up Dinner, a peer-to-peer networking community for seed and early stage businesses.
Date: 1 September, 6.30pm to 9pm
Location: Open Collaborative Worskpace, 4th Floor, The Main Change, 20 Kruger Street, Maboneng, Johannesburg
Nigeria
This five-day entrepreneurship programme is aimed at business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. This programme will help you recognise and understand the skills you ahve and the ones you have to develop.
Date: 28 August, 9.30pm to 1 September 4pm
Location: Rose of Sharon Church Ikeja, GRA by PWD Bus Stop, Ikeja
Angel investors masterclass Abuja
This event is part of a series of capacity building events aimed at assisting early-stage investors in Africa. At the event, investor and entrepreneur Tom Davies will share his best practices and talk about early-stage investing.
Date: 31 August, 2pm to 6pm
Location: Open Collaborative Worskpace, 4th Floor, The Main Change, 20 Kruger Street, Maboneng, Johannesburg
Ghana
Applying design thinking to fintech
Come and learn from experts on how to apply design thinking to ensure that the financial products you develop will result in high usage and revenue. This event is being held by The Financial Inclusion Forum Africa in collaboration with the Design Thinking Ghana Hub.
Date: 30 August, 6.30pm to 8.30pm
Location: China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), 5 Monrovia Road, East London, Accra
Angola
Conversas Startup (Startup conversations)
Come meet other entrepreneurs, founders and innovators as they talk about Luanda’s ecosystem, startups, technology and innovation.
Date: 1 September, 6pm
Location: Thomson House, Avenida Murtala Mohamed, 260 Island of Luanda, Luanda
Featured image: afromusing via Flickr (CC 2.0 BY-SA, resized)
