Garage48, Innovation Village Connect Tech-Enabled Start-Ups

Garage48 and Estonia Centre for International Development in partnership with The Innovation Village on Wednesday organised a two-day workshop themed Empowering the Start-up Community (ESC) to discuss ways in which ecosystem builders can be revitalised to support innovators and entrepreneurs’ needs within East Africa.

ESC workshop is part of the European Union (EU). Africa Journey programme aimed at boosting the local start-up ecosystem and strengthening networking and collaboration ties between the start-up hubs and entrepreneurial support organisation locally and in neighboring countries. Speaking at the event in Kampala, Arthur Mukembo, the Lead FutureLab Studio at Innovation Village noted the start-up ecosystem needs collaboration to scale.

He said, “The ESC workshop will provide our local entrepreneurs with the platform to network with their counterparts in Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda, understand their strengths, leverage on the available opportunities, and strengthen our collaboration with key players in the East Africa entrepreneurial support organisations.”

He said the growth challenges mapped out by entrepreneurs at the early and later stage during the workshop, is intended to develop a best practice manual on tackling these issues and a resource guide on the opportunities, funding, and investment sources and give recommendations on how to support them during these impeding moments. “We want to see how you can enable Ugandan start-ups to expand into each of your markets as well. Ultimately, we are stronger together and have a great opportunity in the East African Community (EAC), Africa Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA),” Mukembo emphasised.

Mukembo concluded The Innovation Village through FutureLab continues to partner with enterprise and entrepreneur support organisations with the purpose to connect innovators and tech-enabled start-ups to available opportunities, tools, and capital needed to solidify their business to be profitable, attract investment and move beyond early-stage adopters.

Joao Rei, Host and Mentor at Garage 48 said, “By engaging more start-up communities across Africa, we will be able to create cross-border connections and form a team of think tanks who understand Africa’s start-up most pressing challenges, and using their experience, we can create solutions with utmost impact to the ecosystem”

Rei added, “Today, we are discussing start-ups, the problems they face in the East African region, and how we as a community of supporters of the ecosystem can help them. Building a start-up starts with an idea and I have realised that within the African context, sometimes we do not want to tell people about the idea. As an ecosystem, we must find a way of helping the start-ups to loosen up regarding this. This rigidity doesn’t help our ecosystem.”

According to a report by Start-up Blink Ecosystem Index in 2021, Uganda obtained 0.18 points in the start-up ecosystem, ranking it the 97th out of 100 countries globally with the most developed and best start-up environment in Africa. Kenya and Rwanda were ranked 61 and 69 respectively. Therefore, it’s crucial to know how strategically we position our start-ups to maximise their potential and tap into the opportunities offered by the East Africa ecosystem to attract avenues for innovation, venture capital firms, and ease ways of doing business.

The Innovation Village is a launchpad for leading entrepreneurs and innovators working to solve our most pressing challenges using technology. Every day, we devise avenues to leverage innovation, entrepreneurship, and technology to deliver lasting solutions to challenges in the world. Our goal is to create a destination that grows companies that matter and is centered around solving the biggest industry and community challenges. We do this by converging networks, talent, capital, and physical assets leading Uganda and the region into industry 4.0.