Bootcamp
Women in Tech 2nd Cohort Launched
Standard Chartered in partnership with @iLabAfrica this week launched the start off a search for a second cohort of women-led technology startups which will see five entrepreneurs win Sh1 million each.
The Standard Chartered Women in Technology Incubator Kenya is Africa’s leading women in tech incubator, aligning with calls for more diversity in technology and for more opportunities for women to develop entrepreneurial and leadership excellence.
Through the Women in Tech Incubator, 10 businesses will benefit from mentorship and seed funding.
The program combines world class startup support with local and international experience to provide Africa’s most competitive and attractive startup incubation program focusing on immersive learning, mentorship, building and growing Africa’s next iconic startups taking on the continent’s most relevant challenges and opportunities.
Shortlisted start-ups will be selected to go through a 12-week incubation period after which five will win Sh1 million.
“The Women In Tech Incubator programme will help identify, grow and bring to the market unique business ideas and change the fortunes of women entrepreneurs and business owners in Kenya,” said Public Services, Youth and Gender Affairs Cabinet Secretary Margaret Kobia while speaking during the launch on Monday.
Last year, the five businesses which received seed funding were solar cooler company Maziwa Plus, e-commerce platform Heri Online, insurance information app Bismart, career solutions hub Zydii and Africa Solutions.
Some of the winners have gone on to attract funding from local and international investors to scale up their businesses.
How to APPLY
- be a woman
- be the CEO with equal or majority ownership in the company
- 18 and above
- of Kenyan nationality
- Agribusiness
- Education
- ICT
- E-Commerce
- E-Health
- Fintech
- Three months incubation at Strathmore University’s leading businss and innovation incubator
- Mentorship from world class mentors
- Coaching by top business, technology and legal professionals
- Immersive, world-class entrepreneurship curriculum
- Networking and exposure to expand your business networks
- USD 10,000 or KES 1,000,000 equity-free grant seed funding for the top 5 winners
- 9 months ongoing support from Standard Chartered and @iBizAfrica to assist with go-to market and scale.
- Participants must be physically available to attend the program over the three months incubation
- Participant accommodation costs are not catered for
For more information Click here
To Apply click here
@iLabAfrica Hosts the MIT Open Mic Africa Summit
Hosted by Strathmore University, @ilabAfrica this year hosted the MIT Open Mic Africa Summit, is an annual summit that celebrates the goals championed by the Legatum center in MIT alongside the Mastercard Foundation.
The peak of the summit is the award of the Zambezi prize, an annual prize for two hundred thousand dollars in in cash prizes and a chance to attend an entrepreneurial boot camp hosted in MIT. The prize is awarded to an entrepreneurial venture that incorporates financial inclusion through both financial technology but also creates social change. Megan Mitchell, who appeared on behalf of the Legatum center emphasised that the end product of the venture had to be impactful on the society. Over 500 applications were received for the Zambezi prize and in narrowing down the applicants, certain criteria, as explained by Ashley Onyango, the program manager for the Mastercard Foundation had to be met. This included the combination of problem solving with economic growth in Africa, providing accessible, affordable financial inclusion to the unemployed and underemployed, and assisting in lifting people out of poverty. The boot camp, a part of the prize, is instrumental in shaping the leadership and entrepreneurial skills of the prize winner as well as enable them to create a network to better scale their venture.
This year’s event was marked with vison talks, short pitches and of course, the promotion of the ten finalists in the running for the Zambezi prize and its award, at the conclusion of the event.
The vision talks focused on entrepreneurs that discussed not only their successes, but also their losses and the lessons that stemmed from them. Rachel Balshan, the Deputy CEO of MFS Africa, detailed her experience in building the company and learning how to make decisions that better shaped the future of MFS Africa and led them more clearly to their goals.
In addition, up and coming entrepreneurs were given a chance to pitch their ideas for ninety seconds, enabling them to get a platform and potential connections to drive their entrepreneurial ventures.
The finalists of the prize included agricultural ventures that targeted smallholders and enabled them to access services such as investment capital, access to small loans and micro finance, real time agricultural education, access to household goods for women and the opportunity to infuse waste collection with a redeemable point system.
The winner of the prize was WALA, a venture set up to bring digital banking to underbanked consumers in Africa using a combination of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence.
In all, the summit exemplified the overarching goals of the prize and spurred discussion about how to create innovative, financially inclusive technology that will spur the growth of smallholders in Africa.
Kids holiday boot camp – Developing the future
Kids holiday boot camp – Developing the future
For the last two weeks @iLabAfrica has held a 2 week kids holiday boot camp for over 30 children from various schools around Kenya as they prepare to resume back to school.
The kids holiday bootcamp, in partnership with digikids, is a two week per school holiday training for children between the ages of 5 and 17 years old in Information Technology and related areas such as robotics and electronics, web design, and web security. The training is hosted by iLAB and based in Strathmore University.
With a rapid rise in the use of and development of technology, there is a corresponding need to gain an understanding in IT from a young age. Started in 2014, the programme sought to address this need and build basic skills and besides this, takes into consideration other factors such as the existing curriculum of the students in which they need more practice, skills or training as well as the need in existing job markets for an understanding of IT. The programme also provides an excellent background for those who wish to study IT further in university and creates a curiosity in IT and provides young children with a creative outlet to learn and develop their interests.
The training divides the children into three age grades, 5-9, 10-12 and 13-17 and teaches them based on their existing skill and knowledge while maintaining the same overall content. The younger students learn by pre-programmed mechanisms while the older students are encouraged to develop and design their own code and have a larger overall project that demonstrates their progress in the programme.
This holiday boot camp enables the students enjoy an enabling environment and are provided with ample computer time to pursue interests outside the curriculum, under the supervision of their instructors. Shiro, a class four student in the programme mentioned that she particularly enjoys the facilities and making new friends as she has an interest in learning how to create a webpage and advertise products as well as enable her to produce better schoolwork.
For more information on the course kindly visit www.ilabafrica.ac.ke or contact Sharon on Email: sanyanga@strathmore.edu Phone number: 0729876680
Internet Safety Bootcamp by DigiKids
Digikids has partnered with @iLabAfrica to bring you various bootcamps that will be focused on training children in digital literacy that will enable them to create technology that works for them, their communities and the world at every stage of their lives and have fun while doing it
Today’s world is dominated by technology and software is its language. This trend can only grow in the future where technology will permeate every aspect of life. Digital literacy is the next-gen literacy and computational thinking is the next-gen thinking of the tech rock stars of the future. The future belongs to those who know how to use this language as creators and innovators to shape the world.
Digikids achieves this goal through:
- Developing computational thinking as a technique for logical thinking and problem solving
- Teaching coding as a tool for creating innovative solutions though fun and easy to learn visual programming languages
- Sensitization on how to interact with technology, especially the internet, safely and securely
- Encouraging hardware invention through easy to use littlebits™ electronic building blocks that use magnetic circuits to create thousands of projects.
Internet Safety for Kids
Digikids has partnered with (ISC)2 Kenya Chapter to build a strong information security culture in our students to enable them become responsible digital citizens. Our internet safety and security education lessons are incorporated into each of our programs so as to bring cyber security information down to a level that children can understand. The training teaches children how to protect themselves online and become responsible digital citizens which allows them to feel comfortable visiting their favorite websites and playing their most challenging online games.
August Bootcamp.
Digikids will be running a bootcamp @iLabAfrica, Strathmore University from 15th to 19th August where students will learn various things including:-
- Coding of mobile apps and games
- Hardware and Robotics
- Problem Solving Skills
- Logical & Computational Thinking
- Web design
- 3D animation
- Child Online Protection (internet safety for kids
Follow @iLabAfrica on Instagram , Twitter and Facebook.
The information was first published on the digikids website.
Negawatt Weekend Eligibilty Criteria
You are eligible to enter Negawatt Weekend provided you meet the following requirements:
- You are, and each of your team members is, at least 18 years old and the age of majority in your/his/her jurisdiction of residence. If you are considered a minor in your place of residence, then you will require parent or legal guardian permission prior to registering for this contest.
- You are, and each of your team members is, a registered attendee of Negawatt Weekend
- You must attend Negawatt Weekend in person to be eligible to win.
- Neither you nor any of your team members are an employee of The World Bank during Negawatt Weekend; nor an immediate family member (parent, sibling, spouse, child) of or household member to an employee
- Neither you nor any of your team members are involved in any part of the creation, promotion, execution or administration of Negawatt Weekend.
- If a Participant is an employee of a corporation, government or an academic institution, enrolled as a student or representing his or her employer, government, or academic institution in Negawatt Weekend, it is his or her sole responsibility to review, understand and abide by his or her employer’s, government’s, or academic institution’s policies regarding eligibility to participate in Negawatt Weekend.
- If a Participant is found to be in violation of his or her school’s, government’s or employer’s policies, then he or she will be disqualified from participating in Negawatt Weekend and being awarded or retaining any prize. The World Bank disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for disputes arising between a student or employee and his or her school, government or employer related to Negawatt Weekend.
Negawatt Weekend does not discriminate based on race, religion, gender, age, sexuality, gender identification, or physical ability.
Submission guidelines
- Submitted entries must be relevant to the theme of solutions for urban energy efficiency.
- There is a limit of one submission per team. Teams are capped at five persons per team.
- You may work on the concept for the entry prior to commencement of Negawatt Weekend.
Judging
Participants will pitch a live demo of their entry before a judging panel at the end of each Negawatt Weekend. Each team will be given approximately 5 minutes including their product demonstration. Judges will select winners based on value creation (25%),relevance to published Negawatt challenges (15%), technical feasibility (25%), financial viability (25%) originality (10%). In the event of a tie, the judges will deliberate a winner.
Intellectual property
- Your Submission must: (a) be your (or your team or organization’s) original work
- A participating team may submit a prototype that includes the use of open source
- Applications may integrate SDKs, APIs and data, provided the team is authorized
- Any applicable intellectual property rights to a submission will remain with the
If you meet the above criteria, go ahead and sign up for the challenge
@iLabAfrica is One of the Recipients of the Google RISE Awards 2015!
We are so proud to announce that we, @iLabAfrica have been listed among 37 organizations as a 2015 RISE Award Recipient. Google Rise Awards are grants for organizations across the globe that:
- Promote Computer Science (CS) education
- Run initiatives that reach girls, underrepresented minorities, and students facing socio-economic barriers under age 18
The Project details…
We aim to hold Computer Science Holiday Boot Camps in Kenya for girls between ages 12 to 18 in the months of April, August and December Holidays. The aim of this program is to introduce Computer Science to girls at an early age as well as increase their interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education) related subjects, through activities that promote knowledge and discovery. For a long time the technology sector has faced allegations of being a male dominated sector. Girls fear taking up technical subjects and have been underrepresented in this area. The program aims to open up their minds for future opportunities in this field.
More details on this project will be posted soon, so keep it here.
