"The Bandwidth Barn workshop will host around 40 participants from South Africa and across the continent," says Chris Vermeulen, Bandwidth Barn GM. "We're very excited about the opportunity to host the AIN workshops in Cape Town, which play an important role in ensuring the managers of African business incubators are able to apply global best practice successfully within their specific operational context."
The material delivered at the workshops has been developed by infoDev, a research, capacity building and advisory services program operating within World Bank Group structures.
"Small businesses are central to Africa's ability to reduce poverty levels and achieve sustainable development," says Michael Reddy, AIN chairperson. "Business incubators play a crucial role in this context, acting as very important conduits of strategic and practical knowledge for emerging entrepreneurs. The function of the AIN workshop is to ensure that the managers of African business incubators gain access to global best practice, and are then able to work within a professional collaborative environment to ensure they apply these skills successfully within their specific local context."
The AIN workshop will cover three of the eleven infoDev training modules, including incubator planning, financing and incubator, and marketing and stakeholder engagement.
"Business incubation has been proven to be one of the most effective ways of creating sustainable small and medium sized businesses, which is why it receives strong support from governments globally," says Dr Jill Sawers, consultant to infoDev. "There is a lot of small business development information available, both codified and tacit and organisations such as AIN and infoDev facilitate the transfer of this information to practitioners in the field. This is done via facilitating community of practice on-ine forums, training programmes, and conferences. This ensures the relevant knowledge is formalised locally so that Africans can play a direct role in developing solutions that cater to the challenges of business on the continent."
