Digital Innovation for Business Resilience in the East African Community

Today, we are proud and excited to announce that StartHub Africa is the leading consulting and implementing partner for the Digital Innovation for Business Resilience in the EAC, a program under the dSkills@EA project aims to support young innovators at universities in the EAC to develop digital innovations for the industry and design new digital business models for business resilience.

Application to join the program kicks off today, 24 January 2022. See program website for details: https://dskills.iucea.org 

Digital Skills for an Innovative East African Industry (dSkills@EA) is a project as part of the technical development cooperation between the EAC and Germany, that aims at strengthening employment and innovation-related digital skills of youth in the EAC and supports the industry’s digital transformation.

The project is implemented by the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA), the Centre of Excellence for ICT in East Africa (CENIT@EA) at the Nelson Mandela African Institution for Science and Technology (NM-AIST), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and an East African-German academic consortium, including the DAAD and the University of Oldenburg.

Through the Digital Innovation for Business Resilience in the EAC program, university students from the six East African nations of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan will compete for a cash prize bucket valued at $10,000 at the regional finale to invest in their startups.

Who can apply?

  • University students and recent graduates (graduation is not more than 1 year in the past) From an East African University
  • Have an idea for a digital innovation or are in early-stages of implementing their innovation
  • Has a team of minimum 2 people
  • Aged 18 – 35 years old
  • Fluent in English
  • Female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply

Teams can apply until 21st February 2022. Selected teams will be invited to refine their ideas during the online Ideathon. After the Ideathon, up to 10 teams per country will participate in a physical bootcamp for in-depth support and will pitch their idea at the National Pitch-Event. The top two teams per country, will finally pitch at the Grand East Africa Finale for grants of a pool of USD10,000.

Learn about the program: https://dskills.iucea.org 

For questions reach out to dskills.ea@starthubafrica.org 

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