WeeklySA_AdminENTREPRENEURSHIP: The winners developed ground-breaking solutions to alleviate municipal challenges hindering effective service delivery for the city…
By Len Maseko
The Innovation Hub, the innovation agency of the Gauteng Province, is spearheading a drive to empower and position youth in the forefront of innovation geared at providing technological solutions to the country’s problems.
Through its incubation programmes, the agency is shaping and promoting entrepreneurship through providing unique spaces across the Gauteng province for high-tech entrepreneurs, world-class businesses, academics, researchers and venture capitalists to network and prosper.
With its headquarters in Pretoria, the agency operates 14 smaller hubs in the townships, focusing on uplifting the youth and small business operators. In the Pretoria area, it also runs an annual innovation programme together with the Tshwane municipality, in which they partner to tackle the city’s challenges like the recent water crisis in Hammanskraal.
At the helm of the organisation is Mr Bangani Mpengalasane, who leads the charge to shape entrepreneurship among the youth and SMMEs to innovate technological solutions. This initiative is in partnership with other stakeholders such as higher learning institutions.
Currently, a synergy between the agency, municipality and Pretoria’s tertiary institutions such as the University of Pretoria and Tshwane University of Technology is assisting the city in finding innovative solutions to its myriad challenges.
Through the Tshwane Higher Education Innovation Challenge Awards competition, the agency and its partners aim to foster creativity and prepare future entrepreneurs with the know-how to solve critical service delivery challenges and ultimately improve the quality of life of the residents of South Africa and elsewhere.
Mpangalasane said, through the challenge or competition, the city identifies problem areas in its operations and engages with the agency in generating solutions to persisting operational issues. Specifically, the agency assists the Tshwane municipality toward achieving its goals “to cultivate inclusive innovation systems, modernise innovation governance structures, decentralise and digitise its management systems.
“We have a memorandum of understanding with the city, where they outline their issues and then we go out to engage with SMMEs and start-ups operating in the particular space to innovate solutions. We also engage with higher learning institutions around the city. We ask their students to do a pitch with their prototypes before a panel of adjudicators, and then we do a pilot programme with winning entries on sites to test and ensure the end result,” said Mpangalane.
Mpangalasane said the agency wanted to tap into available research knowledge lying dormant at these institutions to utilise it to develop solutions towards mitigating the challenges facing the province.
“Our solutions and collaborations span across the globe,” he added. “We also have partnerships with science parks around the world”.
This year, the Tshwane Higher Education Innovation Challenge Awards competition attracted over 250 entries from talented individuals from local tertiary institutions. Their brief was to develop ground-breaking solutions that aim to alleviate municipal challenges that hinder effective service delivery for the City of Tshwane.
Of primary importance too, is for the programme to assist in initiating new strategic platforms for piloting of service delivery solutions and build a portfolio that adds value to the city and the communities, Mpangalasane added.
The competition’s winners were announced at a ceremony held at Innovation Hub offices in Pretoria on December 4. The winners showcased projects that addressed pressing societal issues, including sustainability in the areas of urban management of energy and technology. Each participant was judged on criteria such as originality, feasibility and potential impact.
Winners received their awards, including seed funding to the total value of R300 000 for their innovations. They will also be granted the opportunity to be incubated at The Innovation Hub and the University of Pretoria, where they will receive mentorship opportunities to help them further develop their ideas and bring their innovations to fruition. The agency plans to host the programme bi-annually.
The award winners included Arnold Mbombi, a student at Tshwane University of Technology, who created a solution for the multi-service municipal digital booking system.
Representing the Tshwane mayor, Ms Anisha Dharunjajh, Group Strategy and Organisational Head at the municipality, said: “Seeing such impressive talent and creativity at this year’s Innovation Challenge has been inspiring. These innovators are not only pushing the boundaries of what’s possible but also making a real difference in our country, communities and even beyond.”
