Africa
Program
Entrepreneurship
Details
With the rise of technology innovation in Africa, multiple sectors such as energy, agriculture, finance, and healthcare are undergoing rapid changes. Africa’s population currently consists of 50% men and 50% women. There is a growing conversation on the disparity in the number of men and women in technology and a growth in interventions to combat the ‘leaky pipeline’ phenomenon that sees women deviating from careers in STEM due to structural barriers such as poor support networks for childcare amongst others.
The conversation on getting more women in Technology is crucial, but just as crucial, if not more so, is the need for female entrepreneurs to be supported in leveraging technology in their businesses- regardless of the sector.
Objective
Against this background, CcHub and iHub created a program that not only focuses on women-led technology businesses, but women-led businesses as a whole, and how these can better leverage technology to scale their solutions in the African market.
This program will focus on businesses in Nigeria and Kenya with the aim to:
- Enhance the ways in which women-led businesses leverage technology to better serve their market
- Build the capacity of women-led businesses to secure capital
- Catalyse the expansion efforts of women-led businesses in the African market
- Build the capacity of women-led businesses to attract, develop and retain quality talent to their teams
- Access to market
This program will bring together female entrepreneurs, software developers, investors, SMEs, corporates and industry experts across multiple sectors.
Criteria
The criteria for participation in the program include:
- Women-led business interested in leveraging technology to scale their businesses
- Registered, with operations in Kenya or Nigeria
- Strong (well-rounded) founding team, working full-time on the business
- Businesses with proven traction in the market (e.g. customers, revenue)
- Scalable businesses that meet a real need.
Benefits
- The use of technology to achieve a strategically differentiated business that speaks to the heart of customer needs.
- An ability to speak investor language and leverage sound financial understanding of your business to secure capital and partnerships.
- Support to expand your business across multiple geographical markets.
- Knowledge on how to attract, develop and retain a strong team.
- Access to a robust network of investors, corporate executives and software developers to help scale your business.
About Co-creation Hub Nigeria (CcHUB)
CcHUB is a social innovation centre dedicated to accelerating the application of social capital and technology for economic prosperity. The technology hub is the first in Nigeria to serve as an Open Living Lab in which user-driven innovation is fully integrated in the co-creative process of new services, products and societal infrastructures.
CcHUB’s methodology is hinged on engaging a community of progressive stakeholders (end-users, subject matter experts, government agencies, businesses, academics, civil societies etc.) who bring their creativity and knowledge to play in co-creating solutions to social challenges faced by the average Nigerian through our open living labs. The resulting innovations are then supported to become sustainable market solutions by providing proactive business support, advice, mentorship and funding through our pre-incubation & research unit.