Three events were recently hosted across Africa to ensure that the AIN gets the maximum exposure over Africa and across relevant role players who share the vision of incubation across the African continent. 

The southern African regional workshop was held in Mozambique from 8 – 10 July 2007 and was opened by Hon. Minister of Science & Technology of Mozambique, Prof. Dr. Eng. Venâncio Massingue. The Minister pronounced his excitement with regards to the whole concept of the African Incubator Network.  He was enthusiastic about the future of the AIN and congratulated all involved on their hard work and dedication towards the cause.   This event attracted more than fifty key role players from various spheres of incubation on an international level. Representation covered countries such as Angola, Botswana, Ghana, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South-Africa, Uganda and Zambia.

Mozambique Workshop Agenda, July 2007 [pdf, 94 KB]

The eastern Africa workshop was held in Uganda from 12 – 13 July 2007 and was opened by Hon. Minister of Tourism, Trade and Industry Janat Mukwaya, who confirmed in her address her support for incubation across Africa and specifically the need to develop regional business support infrastructure. She described business incubation as a business development approach that aims at providing qualified new start-up businesses with a set of facilities and resources namely; physical space, shared services, skills training, mentoring, marketing and networking. This event attracted 56 incubation professionals from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South-Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.

Uganda Workshop Agenda, July 2007 [pdf, 50 KB]

The western Africa workshop was held in Ghana from 16 – 17 July 2007, and gathered over fifty incubator professionals, business development service providers, government decision makers and higher education representatives from West Africa, including Senegal, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, and representatives from South-Africa, Uganda and Canada also participated.  This workshop was opened by the Minister of Communication, Dr. Benjamin Agrey-Ntim who in his statement said that the “Government of Ghana on its part remains committed to facilitating policy development aimed at promoting business development that will ensure that business startups are equipped with the necessary grounding to survive and be competitive in the global market”.

Ghana Workshop Agenda, July 2007 [pdf, 51 KB]

The contributions that came from all three these workshops are imperative towards the future success of the African Incubator Network. The generic outcome from all the workshops is that the AIN should focus on the following key areas of importance:

• Creation of a Knowledge Repository that should be available across the entire network, this repository should encapsulate a complete online portal & website with online conferencing and knowledge sharing capabilities and should be used for sharing incubator management and communication tools across Africa.
• Driving to create awareness of incubation on an international level to engage in the donor community and to understand country stakeholders, policy makers and regulatory environments.
• Promoting the African Incubator Network across all counties and regions, with a focus on governments, private sector, tertiary institutions and incubators by means of newsletters and press releases and knowledge sharing activities.
• Building Capacity in the Network for the AIN so that training can become available to all interested incubator professionals and the sharing of training resources on iDISC and the AIN portal. It is important to do a needs analysis, training material development and accreditation of the training material
• Actively train future Incubator Professionals (train-the-trainer) to become successful and dedicated Incubator Managers.

At all levels the sharing of knowledge and strengthening of linkages amongst all stakeholders was identified as key to the successful achievement of the AIN’s unified objective – to provide the right environment for successful growth of businesses to facilitate rapid economic development in Africa.

Please also take a look at the attached AIN Network newsletter from August 2007 to see the latest network developments. To sign up for the letter, please e-mail lalane@sbti.co.za.

These events have been hosted jointly by infoDev, Softstart BTI, MICTI,  UIRI, BusyInternet, with the support of SEDA Technology Program, SPEED, and GIMIC.

For more information about the network and its activities, please contact infoDev's Regional Facilitator for Africa, Mr. Steve Giddings, at sgiddings(at)worldbank.org.