Techstars Startup Week Lusaka All Set For 20-24 June, 2022

Startup Week Lusaka is a celebration of entrepreneurship and the people shaping the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Lusaka. By late 2018, in Zambia, the circular economy had become one of the most trending buzzwords in the social enterprise space. Almost every environmental campaign, article or piece of research referred to the circular economy in one way or the other. The circular economy had a lot to do with the environment. The second thing was that social enterprise, Ulubuto was building a solution that encouraged the reduction and reuse of waste, particularly single-use plastic. The 3rd and probably the most exciting was that BongoHive, Zambia’s first Innovation and Technology Hub housed the Social Enterprise Academy Programme.

Thus, the smart circular economy aims to improve resource performance and fight the volatility that climate change might bring to businesses. It has benefits that are operational as well as strategic and will bring together a huge potential for value creation within the economical, business, environmental and societal spheres.

Startup Week Lusaka 2022 seeks to explore, in an atmosphere of celebration, the benefits of uniting digital maturity with resource optimization thereby exposing ideas on how to leverage Digital Technologies to maximize resource efficiency.

To learn more about the background of Techstars Startup Week you can visit https://www.techstars.com/communities/startup-week

Here are the links to register:

• Startup registration form – https://bit.ly/3DEYhsB
• Attendees’ registration form – https://bit.ly/3Ls18HH

The thematic areas are:

• Smart Energy
• Smart Healthcare
• Smart Waste Management
• Smart Manufacturing
• Smart Agriculture
• Smart Mobility
• Smart Finance
• Smart Education
• Green Investing

“The idea behind Startup Week is to bring the tech ecosystem together with the understanding that the world’s best-performing ecosystems are connected ecosystems. This is an opportunity for all the ecosystem stakeholders to connect and share knowledge whilst celebrating the successes of our own. With a blend of both local and international speakers we also expect that Startup Week Lusaka should help connect the local to the global ecosystem which should help attract capital inflows as Zambia’s ecosystem story is being told and heard across the globe.

We are hosting the same for the third year running having started during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic where we ran it 100% virtually. This year will be Hybrid under the theme ‘Embracing the Smart Circular Economy’ with the main event taking place at the NIPA Information & Conference Centre.” Stephen Muraga,  Chief Operations Officer of NyamukAfrica shared.

The Minister of Technology and Science Hon. Felix Mutati is expected as the Guest of Honour , and one of the notable speakers will be Ms Violeta Bulc, an entrepreneur who is the Curator of Ecocivilisation, Former EU Commissioner for Transport and also Former Deputy Prime Minister of Slovenia. She is an authoritative voice on the Circular Economy topic.

NyamukAfrica and the Women Entrepreneurship Access Centre (WEAC) are the Organizing Partners for this year’s Startup Week Lusaka.