Ungana-Afrika received a multi year grant from OSISA and Hivos in 2006 to promote socially relevant ICT entrepreneurship as a sustainable approach to address many development challenges that underserved communities are facing. The aim for this project is to assist social entrepreneurs to generate ideas, design and incubate sustainable ICT services for the underserved communities and networks. The project is expected to last until early 2011.
Incubation Workshops
The program consist of several two-day incubation workshops that engage leaders of civil society organisations, small and medium enterprises, local government and institutions of higher learning to understand and implement ICT programs and services that promote equality and sustainability.
In underserved areas several communities, and organisations involved in these communities (civil society, small and medium enterprises and local government offices, schools, etc) are often not able to take advantage of opportunities provided by information and communication technologies (ICT). The limited ICT capacity and access are partly a result of a lack of service providers with an understanding of the needs, environment, and technology trends specific to these areas.
The workshops are addressing this ICT vacuum by creating an awareness of ICT service providers and ICT for development organisations. During the workshop, the specific topics that are presented include:
- Challenges facing under served communities, networks and institutions
- Innovative ICT solutions to support the underserved
- The role, traits and challenges of social entreprises
- Business modelling and planning (Including feasibility, market determination and financial analysis aspects)
- Examples of services and business models that promote equality and sustainability
- Hands-on group planning exercises in designing implementation strategies
These workshops have already been organised in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe and have had more than 200 attendees to date.
Support for business model development and feasibility analysis
The workshops have been used as way to identify a few selected in-country partners to benefit from the enterprise and business model expertise of Ungana-Afrika. Ungana-Afrika has been helping qualified organisations in the Southern African region, providing important coaching and mentoring services.
Our team has provided incubation related consultancy, mentorship and assistance to qualifying organisations, and helped them to conceptualise potential ideas and develop business models based on a locally relevant service concept. We are also helping organisations to analyse the feasibility of the developed business models.
Our services consist of a mix of local training and planning visits, online mentoring and assistance, and group training sessions in South Africa where the emphasis is put on peer learning between the organisations. During these projects we follow a well defined process, including concept and case discussions, business modelling exercises, research and documentation of the drafted business model, and an analysis of the relevant aspects of the business model's feasibility. The in-country partners are expected to implement most of the modelling and documentation tasks, but Ungana-Afrika is assisting with areas that require additional capacity.
