Windhoek – The National Commission on Research, Science and Technology (NCRST) together with the Southern Africa Network for Biosciences (SANBio) launched the FemBioBiz Acceleration programme on 15 March 2018.
This programme is aimed at supporting female-owned businesses in Biosciences. The purpose of the FemBioBiz programme is to create a network of women bio-entrepreneurs in the SADC region, to develop leadership, technological and business skills in female-owned businesses as well as to support deal-making and business acceleration in the Biosciences sector. SANBio is a NEPAD Agency Flagship for collaborative research, development and innovation platform aimed at addressing Southern Africa’s challenges in health and nutrition.
The Network is comprised of 13 of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Member States and operates on a Regional Hub (The CSIR in South Africa) and Country Nodes model. The current SANBio Member States are Angola, Botswana, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Lesotho, South Africa, Seychelles, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The NCRST as the coordinator for FemBioBiz II in Namibia, hosted a training workshop on business model canvasing. Twenty-two participants were selected to partake in Phase 1, of which only 15 were selected for the second phase. The training was held over three days (21-23 May 2018) at the Fürstenhof Protea Hotel, Windhoek. The 3-day Bootcamp training focused on business strategy, marketing and financial training as well as pitch preparation and exercises. The Bootcamp 2 training will take place in July 2018, focusing on areas such as intellectual property (IP), legal and human resources. In addition, a 1-day pitch competition will take place after Bootcamp 2 training to select the in-country (national) winners. The national winners will compete in the regional competition within Southern Africa at the Innovation Summit 2018. Thereafter, regional winners will compete at Europe’s biggest Start-up Festival, SLUSH in Finland.