Innovation and entrepreneurship conference Tech4Africa has partnered with South African incubator Sw7 to host an additional “entrepreneurs only” day at this year’s Tech4Africa event.
The Tech4Africa annual main conference is set to take place at Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium on October 7 and 8, featuring 55 guest speakers who will present on various topics relating to innovation, startups and entrepreneurship in Africa.
This year, the organisation announced it has partnered with local incubator Sw7 for the launch of an additional day dedicated to entrepreneurs exclusively, dubbed “Yet Another Startup Event” (YASE).
YASE will be held on October 9, with all the speakers to be active entrepreneurs, and discussion and presentations to be focused on “how to” type themes.
The partners said the event will provide “in the trenches intel”, from those actively pursuing entrepreneurship in African markets.
“What’s been interesting for us is that when we analysed the landscape, very few of them seem to be run by people with real time in the trenches, and we think that time in the trenches is the only signal an entrepreneur should be paying attention to with all the noise we have today. So we sat down with SW7, the largest and fastest growing accelerator in Africa, and decided to put together an event that we would take time out for,” said Gareth Knight, founder of Tech4Africa.
Speaker content for the day will cover topical problems such as which growth verticals to pick, the local landscape, bootstrapping, SME finance, how to do business with large organisations, how to move IP offshore, how to raise capital, and how to grow your business internationally.
“We’ve found that entrepreneurs are driven to find people like themselves, and that the best value for time comes from learning from other entrepreneurs who have worked the same or similar problems before. We’re all on this journey together, some are ahead, some are behind, but we’ve all got something to learn. And I guess that’s what attracts us to Tech4Africa – their spirit is can-do, and must-learn, and we love the honesty they bring,” said Keith Jones, co-founder of Sw7.
Tickets cost ZAR350 (US$25) for the day – in addition to the ZAR500 (US$36) for the main event – and can be reserved here.