The University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Graduate School of Business has announced the creation of up to 10 scholarships for innovators and entrepreneurs working towards sustainable development in Africa.
The scholarships will be offered by two specialised units of the Graduate School of Business, the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and the school’s recently established innovation lab, MTN Solution Space.
The two units will offer up to ten partial and fully paid scholarships for the school’s MBA and MPhil in Inclusive Innovation courses, to social innovators, entrepreneurs and mid-career professionals, who want to play a positive leadership role in the sustainable development of the continent.
According to UCT, the scholarships are inspired by the conviction that what the African continent needs are leaders equipped with both conventional business acumen as well as the ability to pioneer and advance unconventional business, entrepreneurial, technological and societal innovations.
“These scholarships offer a rare opportunity to Africa’s leaders, social innovators and entrepreneurs to study at Africa’s leading business school, to gain exposure to innovative study programmes and projects and be a part of ground-breaking initiatives, as well as to meet and engage with some of the continent’s most exciting and interesting entrepreneurs, changemakers, academics and leaders of business and civil society,” said director of the Bertha Centre, Dr François Bonnici.
The Bertha Centre’s scholarships are open to candidates in any field where they have been exploring social and environmental impact through innovative approaches. A preference may be given to those candidates working in the Centre’s focus areas of inclusive healthcare innovation, innovative finance and education innovations.
The MTN Solution Space scholarships aim to build exceptional leadership capacity in the technology, media and telecom sector, by providing excellent educational and training opportunities to individual Africans with leadership potential.
The scholarships are only offered to citizens of an African country.
Applications are open until November 15.