The two-day SWEAT AFRICA event is underway at the Bertha Retreat, nestled between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek. The gathering brings together investors, founders, entrepreneurs and young start-up owners with one shared mission: contributing meaningfully to Africa’s development through technology, collaboration and capital. As Channel Africa’s Sisi Segalo reports, the event has also attracted the participation of some of the continent’s top universities.
The origin story of SWEAT AFRICA is as unconventional as it is symbolic. Professor Tulio de Oliveira, Director of CERI at Stellenbosch University and one of the co-founders of SWEAT Africa, the concept emerged from an informal meeting between young entrepreneurs and global investors.
“So the idea came the end of last year when we got a start-up owners that’s young entrepreneurs together with investors. And some of the big investors in the world, we are talking about big ones like Google and OpenAI. That’s the company that make ChatGPT. We went for a long run in the mountain and then we meet in a wine bar in Stellenbosch. That’s how everything ends Stellenbosch. And we joke as we were sweating that they would bring them in the hottest time of the year to show the hottest innovation in Africa. We would call some Sweat Africa, and why that is because this week we are also running a big acceleration program with MIT and Open Start-up International, and then we say, Let’s build an event in the end. And then everything mushrooms. We end up with all the top universes in South Africa, many of the top ones in Africa, coming together and with funders to really mix and match,” he said.
In the two -days, the event will be hosting from 120 to 150 start-ups and over 50 investors, with the aim of building the new companies for the future of the continent. One of the start-up companies in attendance, is Green Giraffe Zambia Technology. The company has built a platform that connects buyers and aggregators to smallholder farmers. They use traceability, and a tool that is able to use local languages and help update compliance information. The company’s Chief Executive Officer, Mwiche Mukoma, explains how she came up with the idea..
“Well, in Zambia, the country I come from, one in eight people are smallholder farmers. It is how 80% of us make a livelihood from agriculture. Yet, with all of that, can you believe that less than 5% of our gross domestic product comes from agriculture? In simple terms, there’s a lot of wastage of really good crops. And the simple issue is you don’t have this digital evidence to prove what you’re growing, how you’re growing, or even where you’re growing. And so we encountered this problem because we were running a business and we were failing to just find good quality products. Now this is a problem you’re thinking, maybe it’s just your problem, but then scale it across neighbouring countries. A lot of countries are not able to export, are not able to access premium markets for the simple reason that they’re not able to prove how they grew their product. And so we’re really excited to be here at Sweat Africa because they believe like us that change management will best be done with technology. Scaling the technology, showing farmers that you can grow things ethically and access a prime market really will change the way we are working,” she said.
Another of the start-ups is Baby Steps Health Technology, a maternal and foetal diagnostic company, helps women from underserved regions to better discover early pregnancy complications and then reroute them into the hospital system. The company uses machine learning algorithms that combine with medical equipment to better help doctors track pregnancy complications early. The company’s founder, Kenyan entrepreneur, Joel Alukwe explains the importance of SWEAT AFRICA
“Right now we are incubated in ALX. It is an ecosystem program that actually helps founders to better refine their ideas and it connects them to investors. At the moment, we are just in an accelerator, but I am hoping in the Sweat Africa program to find investors who are aligned with our mission and vision,” he said.
The start-ups companies would not survive if they do not have someone holding their hand. Diego Arias is a coach and mentor who is in South Africa as part of the Brain program, an Open Startup International initiative which is an organisation originally from Tunisia. The organisation supports entrepreneurs all across Africa. Arias says they are intentional about the organisation’s focus
“And so this program is specifically focused on deep tech, so technical founders in healthcare and agriculture. And I’m here to support them. And my mission is to help them be investment ready, so be able to access more capital from investors and support them with anything they need, whether it’s go-to-market, marketing support, data room reviews, anything they need to make sure they succeed,” he said.
–ChannelAfrica–
