Innovating in a Crisis
The Africa Innovation Fellowship 2020 programme was designed to develop skills and foster leadership, entrepreneurship, facilitate mentorship and networking on the African continent.
Designing and developing the Africa Innovation Fellowship hinged on WomEng’s understanding of the current landscape of entrepreneurship in Africa. It was also designed understanding the key challenges facing female founders on the continent. These include:
The Africa Innovation Fellowship (AIF) was an opportunity to gather female founders across sub-Saharan countries with the aim to support the next generation of businesses across Africa. It was an opportunity for founders to build their understanding of business operations, governance, investment, leadership development and health aspects with the guidance and use of a unique set of engagement tools.
Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the AIF 2020 framework was redesigned to be delivered virtually with a potential in-person accelerator planned as the last phase with the understanding that a re-assessment of the possibility of running this in person would be required given Covid-19 developments as the impacts were better understood through the year.
WomEng remained committed to the purpose of the programme and ensured that the revised framework still met the following objectives:
Designing and developing the Africa Innovation Fellowship hinged on WomEng’s understanding of the current landscape of entrepreneurship in Africa. It was also designed understanding the key challenges facing female founders on the continent. These include:
- Funding
- Access to and understanding of funding options and knowledge on how to raise capital. Challenges also include sexual harassment in the funding space.
- Access to other capital beyond financial:
- Human capital
- Network capital
- Business capital
- Streamlining Production Processes and Costs.
- Reducing Raw Material costs
- High upfront costs
- Improving core business operations.
The Africa Innovation Fellowship (AIF) was an opportunity to gather female founders across sub-Saharan countries with the aim to support the next generation of businesses across Africa. It was an opportunity for founders to build their understanding of business operations, governance, investment, leadership development and health aspects with the guidance and use of a unique set of engagement tools.
Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the AIF 2020 framework was redesigned to be delivered virtually with a potential in-person accelerator planned as the last phase with the understanding that a re-assessment of the possibility of running this in person would be required given Covid-19 developments as the impacts were better understood through the year.
WomEng remained committed to the purpose of the programme and ensured that the revised framework still met the following objectives:
- Increase the number of quality female candidate applicants to the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation.
- Provide entrepreneurial incubation support to the Founder’s ventures.
- Provide mentoring support to the Founders prior, during and post application and potential selection.