She Leads Africa and Intel Corp have announced a series of workshops to be held across Africa exclusively targeting young female developers and tech entrepreneurs, aimed at providing skills and business training.
The first event will take place in Nairobi, Kenya on January 24; to be followed by events in Lagos, Nigeria, and Johannesburg, South Africa.
She Leads Africa said the educational workshops hope to support female entrepreneurs by providing them with the skills necessary to “derisk” and successfully launch a tech startup.
“To execute efficiently, entrepreneurs need to learn a number of skills including strategy development, marketing, fundraising, and pitching. It is of course possible to learn this via trial and error and in many ways entrepreneurship is about getting out of the classroom and doing things. That said entrepreneurial training helps minimize this trial and error period,” Yasmin Belo-Osagie, co-founder of She Leads Africa told Disrupt Africa.
“More generally entrepreneurial training allows you to derisk your venture. This sort of derisking is especially important in this market where limited funding options means that entrepreneurs have less opportunity for sustained losses.”
Belo-Osagie believes women have a key role in building educated, economically active societies and as such it is critically important to promote female entrepreneurs. According to the co-founder, women also have a special capacity to create products for female consumers.
“From a societal standpoint, investing in women reaps significant dividends for families and societies. Women tend to be investment multipliers: investing the majority of their income back into their families and communities. Investments by women result in better educated, healthier children who go on to be more productive, more prosperous citizens,” Belo-Osagie said.
“From an economic standpoint, we’ve found that entrepreneurs tend to create products for consumers that they understand… By promoting female entrepreneurs, we hope that more and more products will be created for female consumers. More consumption will ultimately drive job creation and GDP growth,” she said.
While the workshops are primarily aimed at teaching skills, She Leads Africa also hopes to create a network of female entrepreneurs across the continent, a “Young Women’s Club”.
“We want to promote a community of female entrepreneurs who can help and support each other. We would like female developers to meet female entrepreneurs who can go on to become their clients . We want female entrepreneurs who run synergistic businesses to come together and see how they can make deals with each other. We want like minded women to come together and become business partners,” Belo-Osagie said.
“People always refer to “Old Boys Clubs”, we believe it’s high time to create a “Young Women’s Club”.”
Those interested need to apply to attend the workshops online, as attendance is on a selection basis.
The organisers said other cities across Africa will be announced over the course of the year, while members of the public can also get in touch to request and event in their city.
