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
Venture Lab Learning Lunch: Startup Sales 101
Learning Lunches deliver workshops for entrepreneurs to learn from experts in their field. Guests are invited to speak on a range of topics that address common issues faced by all first-time founders.
Date: 10 October, 1pm to 2.30pm
Location: UCT Graduate School of Business, MTN Solution Space, 8 Portswood Road, Green Point
For those working in startups, lean (startup) coffee is a weekly one hour coffee meetup that runs a mashup of leancoffee.org with theleanstartup.com.
Date: 11 October, 8.30am to 9.30am
Location: 1 Somerset Road, Green Point, Cape Town
Rise to the Challenge: Cybersecurity
Rise to the Challenge aims to shake the current thinking and identify the opportunities and challenges that banks and startups face.
Date: 12 October, 9am to 11am
Location: Rise Cape Town, Block B, 5th Floor, (Woodstock Exchange), 66 – 68 Albert Road, Woodstock, Cape Town
Startup Grind hosts Antoinette Prophy
Join 88 Business Collective founder and managing director Antoinette Prophy at this week’s Startup Grind event. In 2003 Prophy founded her first business, Afrofusion Advertising. Six years later, in 2009, she acquired another agency and led the company’s expansion programme to Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria. Prophy also serves on the Silicon Cape Community Council.
Date: 12 October, 5.30pm to 8.30pm
Location: Workshop 17, 17 Dock Road, V&A Waterfront
Cape Town Bitcoin and Crypto Investors Meetup
There are no stupid questions in these sessions. Whether you are brand new to bitcoin ownership or part of the cryptocurrency old guard, this informal meetup will help you learn more about what is going on in the cryptocurrency space.
Date: 12 October, 6pm to 8pm
Location: 4 Bree Street, 1601 Portside Tower, Cape Town
Johannesburg
Thuli Madonsela and Nicky Newton King: Ethical leadership and corruption
Two South African powerhouses ask the hard questions about ethical leadership, corruption and irresponsible governance. Join former public protector Thuli Madonsela and JSE CEO Nicky Newton-King in conversation.
Date: 11 October, 7pm to 8pm
Location: Hyatt Regency, 191 Oxford Road, Rosebank, Illovo, Johannesburg
Chatbots, robo-advice and artificial intelligence demo night
Artificial intelligence (AI) is turning heads in the C-Suite. Are you plugged into these new technologies? Organisations that are currently exploring the potential of technologies such as chatbots, robo-advice, speech and facial recognition are poised to transform and impact how we all do business.
Come and experience the future of these technologies and how AI technologies can represent the best kind of collaboration between humans and machines in financial services.
Date: 12 October, 6pm to 8.30pm
Location: AlphaCode, 2 Merchant Place, 1 Fredman Drive, Sandton
Johannesburg Launch: The Circle of Young Intrapreneurs
Join one of the largest networks of social intrapreneurs at the launch of the Johannesburg circle for a few drinks, discussions and debates around social innovation and social intrapreneurship. You will learn more about The Circle and about doing well while doing good.
Date: 12 October, 6.30pm to 9pm
Location: PWC Business School, 7 Kikuyu Road, Sunninghill
Innovating Justice Boostcamp Johannesburg
This event will highlight this year’s semi-finalists from the HiiL Innovating Justice Challenge. During the Boostcamp a jury will select the winners of the Innovating Justice Awards and acceleration funding worth over €20 000.
The Innovating Justice Boostcamp will feature keynote addresses followed by pitches and interactive working sessions that bring together the different worlds of entrepreneurs, investors, civil society, justice professionals and academia.
Date: 13 October, 5pm to 10pm
Location: Open Maboneng, 20 Kruger Street, Johannesburg
eKasiLab Mohlakeng Startup Weekend
This workshop aims to attract youth entrepreneurs with an innovative edge. The entrepreneurs will form teams and discuss ideas around development of prototypes.
Date: 13 October to 15 October,
Location: Mohlakeng, 3521 Ralerata Street, Mohlakeng, Randfontein
Kenya
Nest periodically runs an entrepreneurship speaker series, where some of the sector’s brightest minds on a specific vertical come together to discuss #WhatsNext? This month the focus is on the energy sector, particularly around the state of renewable energy in the region.
The event will feature a dynamic mix of investors and experts in the fields of geothermal, biogas, solar, wind and biomass energy.
Date: 13 October, 6pm to 8pm
Location: Mettā Nairobi, 14 Riverside Drive, Belgravia Building, Nairobi, Nairobi County
Nigeria
Find out how you can scoop a share of $1-million in prize funding. Join Kayode Fahm’s talk on The Chivas Venture vision, objectives and anticipated outcomes.
Date: 13 October, 5pm to 7pm
Location: Seedspace Parkview 7th Floor, 23 Agodoba Avenue, Ikoyi, Lagos
Mozambique
This workshop will include informative discussions on education, entrepreneurship and careers in tech. This is also a great networking opportunity to meet with other women in tech.
Date: 12 October, 9am to 6pm
Location: Ahmed Sekou Touré, 908 Ministério do Gênero, Criança e Acção Social, Maputo
Zambia
Introduction to Barclays Payments API
Curious about what it takes to add a payments option to your online platform or app? Would you rather accept card payments than cash for your solution? Come and learn from Gilbert Sibajene as he talks about how he used the Barclays payments application programming interface to build Zamtel’s bill payment platform.
Date: 10 October, 6pm to 8pm
Location: BongoHive, Thabo Mbeki Road, Lusaka, Lusaka Province
Featured image: Erik (HASH) Hersman via Flickr (CC 2.0 BY-SA, resized)
